April Was a Disastrous Month for Workplace Safety

The month of April couldn't end too soon for work injury lawyers. It's been a terrible 30 days for American workers, with at least three major disasters killing dozens of people and injuring several others.

This mensis horribilis began with the explosion at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes in Washington on April 2^nd, which killed seven workers. Just three days later, there was a massive explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. Twenty nine workers have since been confirmed dead in that explosion. As the month wound towards a close and Houston work accident lawyers thought things couldn't get much worse, there was a massive explosion on a Transocean-owned semisubmersible rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Eleven persons are believed to have been killed in that oil rig explosion.

Mine, Oil Rig Explosions Underscore Dangers to Workers

Both the West Virginia mine disaster and the Gulf of Mexico Transocean oil rig explosion were the worst workplace disasters in their respective industries in recent memory. It seems like these two disasters have woken federal safety officials to the need for better protections for these workers. Federal mining agencies have begun investigating the Upper Big Branch Mine and its long history of safety violations. Lawmakers in Congress have begun to ask questions from Transocean, the company that owned the Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible rig which exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. A number of agencies including the Interior Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the US Coast Guard are involved in investigating the explosion.

Every year, 5000 American workers are killed in construction accidents, refinery explosions, chemical burns, toxic exposure, fires and other workplace accidents. More than 49,000 American workers die from operational illness caused by exposure to workplace hazards. These include blood cancers from exposure to benzene, mesothelioma from exposure to asbestos and a host of other illnesses. April 28^th was Workers' Memorial Day, a reminder that we should be memorializing fewer workers, and saving more of them