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Is Cell-Phone-Tower-Climbing America's Most Dangerous Job?

by Terrence O'Brien on July 25, 2008 at 10:15 AM



Depending on whom you believe, climbing cell phone towers may be the most dangerous job in America. According to a recent article in industry trad mag RCR Wireless, and the head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, workers who spend their days scaling cell phone towers die at much higher rates than most other laborers. Even 'Dateline' has picked up on the claim and is preparing a report on the subject.

But as the Wall Street Journal points out, the data isn't that cut and dry. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' most recent census in 2006, the most dangerous work in America is fishing and other related fishing jobs (geez, can't these fisherpeople wear life jackets?. And the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries from 2006 didn't even list cell phone tower workers as a separate category. Cell phone tower work is such a small sub-industry, which makes the number of deaths somewhat minimal. Eighteen people died on the job in 2006, and only seven in 2005. Due to the small number of workers in the field, however, these numbers scale to 183.6 deaths for every 100,000 workers in 2006.

Adding another level of complexity to the claim is the nature of the height at which the work is performed, which means that more injuries lead to death. Other jobs may have much higher serious injury rates, but lower fatality rates.

Even so, it's clear that working on cell phone towers is one of the most dangerous jobs in America, even if it still can't claim the crown of most dangerous. [Source: Wall Street Journal, Via: Textually]

Tags: cell phone tower, CellPhoneTower, danger, dangerous, expire-images2009-7-22, jobs, most dangerous desti..., MostDangerousDesti...

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