Plastics industry safety record improving, but smaller firms lag

Injury and illness rates in plastics processing plants dropped about 20 percent in the last decade, but smaller factories remain much more dangerous places to work than larger facilities, government safety statistics show.

Experts point to a number of factors for the improvement across the industry as a whole, from more technology and automation to reduce hazards, to more focus on safety within companies and efforts to analyze accidents and near-accidents.

The plastic product manufacturing industry's injury and illness rate in 2018, the last year statistics are available, fell to a record low of 3.8.

While that is progress, the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics also points to a troubling disparity in injury and illness rates between smaller and larger plants.

Smaller plastics processing plants, those with between 50 and 249 workers, had significantly higher injury and illness rates than larger plants, particularly those with more than 1,000 employees.

In some cases, workers in smaller molding, extrusion and other processing plants were nearly twice as likely to be injured on the job, according to the government data.

The processing industry's overall rate of injury and illness in the U.S. fell to 3.8 cases per 100 full-time equivalent workers in 2018, down from 4.0 in 2017.

It's a sizable drop from 2010, when the rate was 5.1. The rate can fluctuate from year to year, but the general trend in BLS data for the last 20 years has been downward.

From 2009 to 2012, for example, the rate was between 4.6 and 5.1. But from 2016-18, the workplace injury and illness rate dropped down to a range between 3.8 and 4.0.

The 2018 rate of 3.8, in fact, is a record low for the plastics processing sector. It's down considerably from the mid-1990s, when the industry rate was over 12.

Marie Gargas, senior technical director of regulatory affairs for the Plastics Industry Association in Washington, said there are many factors behind improving safety rates. She said the association could not comment on specific data but can point to general factors.

She highlighted strategies like more focus on identifying and addressing "near misses," and pointed to the National Safety Council effort launched last year, the Work to Zero 2050 initiative. A key focus for that project is to analyze near-miss incidents and try to prevent them.

"Our members have focused on this, with one site sharing that submissions of near misses increased 75 percent," Gargas said.

NSC said that for every major workplace injury, there are 29 minor injuries and 300 incidents that didn't result in injuries but could have.

"If organizations focus on preventing the noninjury incidents, then the minor and major injuries will decrease as well," NSC said in its February "Safety Technology 2020" report, issued as part of the initiative.

The report mentions a few areas of near misses to target — such as lockout/tag-out to control hazardous energy and machine guarding — that are frequently cited violations in plastics industry Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspections.

Injection molder Plastikos Inc. in Erie, Pa., said the company's safety committee takes that approach of analyzing situations where a serious problem may have been averted to determine "how do we prevent this near miss from becoming a bigger accident," said President Phil Katen.

He believes a focus on safety has helped Plastikos appear regularly on the Plastics Industry Association's list of safer plants within the industry.

Gargas said safety initiatives within plastics companies have focused on areas such as lockout/tag-out, material handling and hand safety.

She said there are some common themes in effective safety programs in the industry, including management support, good communication and securing the participation of all employees. That can include requiring behavior-based safety observations and inviting workers to write safety alerts that are sent to the entire factory.

As well, the structure of safety committees can have an impact, Gargas said: "There's a real emphasis on cross-functional teams."

The falling accident rate within plastics firms mirrors that of the private sector as a whole.

Manufacturing across the board has fallen from 4.3 to 3.4 between 2009-18, and the NSC report notes that injury rates have dropped 67 percent across all private sector firms in the last quarter-century, although NSC said workplace deaths have not declined nearly as much as injuries.

The NSC points to workers' compensation laws, government oversight through agencies like OSHA, safety training and attempts to promote safety culture in organizations for the reduction in workplace injuries.

While the overall injury and illness rates have been trending down for plastics processing plants, the picture is more nuanced when you start to break the data down by factory size.

Within the industry, the BLS data indicates that smaller factories have much higher rates of workplace-related injuries and illnesses.

Here are some numbers: In 2018, processing plants with between 50 and 249 employees reported 4.1 incidents per 100 full-time workers.

That's about 60 percent higher than the 2.6 incidents per 100 full-time workers reported by factories with more than 1,000 employees.

The gap persisted, however, to a lesser degree for midsized facilities with between 250 and 999 employees. They reported 3.5 incidents per 100 full-time equivalent workers.

In 2017, the gap between the biggest and smallest was more pronounced. Factories with between 50-249 employees had almost twice the recordable injury and illness rate of the largest firms.

Small facilities with fewer than 250 workers had 4.8 incidents per 100 full-time equivalent workers in 2017, compared with 2.5 incidents in factories with more than 1,000 employees, and 3.2 incidents per 100 FTE in factories from 250 to 999 employees.

Industry officials and safety experts pointed to several general factors to explain the disparities — larger companies are more likely to have full-time professional safety staff, and larger firms usually have more resources to invest in automation and technology to reduce injuries.

"To me, some of it seems to be economically driven," said Dean Bidlack, an industrial safety consultant with the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation who has done a lot of work in the state's plastics facilities and attended specialized safety training for plastics factories.

Smaller firms often don't have full-time safety staff and may be less able to afford technology that can reduce injuries, he said.

"Larger companies can be more automated," he said. "Robotics can really help, but you absolutely need the money to invest."

To help firms make investments, BWC has dramatically increased funding for its safety grant program, from $4 million in 2012 to $35 million this year, said BWC spokesman Tony Gottschlich. Companies apply for the funding for specific help, he said.

A BWC report analyzing some previous grants in the plastics industry found that automation had a strong impact in reducing injury risk in a number of areas, including flash trimming, assembly of plastic window frames and material handling.

Gottschlich said the agency, which provides free safety consultation to companies as part of their workers' compensation premiums, has seen a 70 percent increase in company requests for its services, which it interprets as a greater focus on safety from companies.

Gargas said the plastics association also works in areas like machinery safety standards and wants to help smaller firms that may have more challenges.

"We facilitate the development of ANSI-accredited machinery standards and work with members, including smaller companies who may need more help, to share challenges, practices and resources," she said. "There's a tremendous amount of expertise and peer support in our industry."