TradeSafe study finds costliest injuries are preventable

A recent study from occupational safety product provider TradeSafe analyzed the average cost of worker injuries across the 15 highest-risk private industries in the United States.

The study combined Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) injury incidence data, National Safety Council (NSC) injury cost estimates, and OSHA enforcement records from 2020 to 2025.

TradeSafe’s biggest takeaway was that most injuries can be traced back to a short list of preventable hazards with established OSHA standards employers are already expected to control.

Key takeaways

• Falls, overexertion, and contact with objects cause 88% of injuries across these industries, every one of them already addressed by existing OSHA standards.
• The pattern is universal: even the least-exposed industry ties 70% of injuries to addressable events, and the most-exposed reaches 96%.
• Air transport carries the most preventable exposure, $292,320 per 100 workers tied to addressable injury events, or 87% of its injury cost.
• Machine guarding, (29 CFR §1910.212(a)(1)), is the most-cited OSHA standard among high-risk industries, with 318 citations from FY2020 to FY2025.
• Scheduled passenger air transportation ranks first for modeled injury cost exposure, at $336,000 per 100 workers annually.
• Beet sugar manufacturing ranks first for average OSHA penalty burden, at $36,567 per cited inspection.