Every year since 1996, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has collected work-related injury and illness data from more than 80,000 employers. For the first time, OSHA has made the data from 1996 to 2007 available in a searchable online database, allowing the public to look at establishment- or industry-specific injury and illness data. The workplace injury and illness data is available at Data.gov.

OSHA uses the data to calculate injury and illness incidence rates to guide its strategic management plan and to focus its Site Specific Targeting (SST) Program, which the agency uses to target its inspections.

“Making injury and illness information available to the public is part of OSHA’s response to the administration’s commitment to make government more transparent to the American people,” said David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for OSHA. “This effort will improve the public’s accessibility to workplace safety and health data a0nd ensure the agency can function more effectively for American workers.”

Information available at the Data.gov Web site includes establishment names; addresses; industries; associated total case rates; days away, restricted, transfer case rates; and the days away from work case rates. The data is specific to the establishments that provided OSHA with valid data through the 2008 data collection. This database does not contain rates calculated by OSHA for establishments that submitted suspect or unreliable data.

More information about the Department of Labor’s Open Government Web site is available at www.dol.gov/open, where there are links to the latest data sets, ways to connect with department staff members, and information about providing public input that will make the department’s site and its work more useful and engaging.