By Kathryn Skelton,Staff Writer
Maine’s most expensive work injury in the last decade was in mining. But it’s trucking that’s put the most hurt on Mainers.

Forget the romantic image of life on the open road: Truck drivers have the most dangerous jobs in Maine.

In the last 10 years, they were injured the most and died the most at work.

Perhaps more unexpected: grocery bagger and school janitor are among the other more injury-prone jobs in Maine.

In figures released this week by the state’s Department of Labor, truck drivers came in behind nurses aides for the number of job-related disabling injuries in 2004, but over the last decade, the trucking profession in Maine has seen more than 55 deaths and 3,500-plus injuries.

“I’ve heard of people securing a load, they get sloppy and slip off the truck,” said Eddy Naples, a truck-driving instructor at Region 9 School of Applied Technology in Mexico. Sometimes drivers wrestle shifting loads or get sick from poor eating and sleeping. “You sit in a cab for 10 hours, you think it’s easy, but it’s beating up on your body in a different way by not moving.”

Three notable facts from the Department of Labor’s look at private, state and municipal workers in Maine in 2004:

• We’re a little healthier: 14,151 Mainers missed a day or more of work after a job-related injury or illness, down from 15,049 in 2003.

• We stretched and broke: One-third of the time people sprained, strained or tore something. More than 660 fractured a bone at work.

• Schools can be dangerous places: Among the five industries with the most injured workers, elementary and secondary school cleaners and janitors reported the most issues.

“I’ve had people get injured lifting cafeteria tables because they’re large and bulky,” said nurse practitioner Gerald Lebel at WorkMed, a rehab program of St. Mary’s Medical Center.

Other common clients: Nurses and nurses aides with lower back and shoulder pains.

In Maine, nurses aides reported 929 job-related injuries in 2004, the most of any occupation.

“It’s not without risk, and we are seeing people with permanent injuries,” Lebel said.

While Maine has ranked higher than average in occupational injuries in the U.S., it’s consistently below average in worker deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As for the job with most fatalities in Maine, trucking has held the distinction recently, and it appears that’ll continue.

Overall, 26 people died on the job here in 2004, the same number as the year before. Data for the first six months of 2005 counts 23 deaths, the most – four – among truckers.

But no workplace appears immune. Single deaths were reported in jobs as varied as retail salesperson, food prep worker, broadcast news analyst and electrician.

Injuries and fatalities are only counted in the labor study if they are linked to actual work. For instance, an on-the-job heart attack by a mill worker would not be counted as a workplace fatality if it did not appear to be triggered by work conditions.

Maine’s costly mining accident

Deaths, rates of injury, costs and lost time can all be used to measure just how dangerous one job is compared to another, said John Rioux, director of the technical services division at Maine’s Bureau of Labor Standards.

In sheer numbers, little comes close to trucking. But that isn’t discouraging people from getting into the business.

With a national driver shortage, Naples said demand for their 10-week course among high school students and adults has stayed strong. He teaches both driver wellness and safety, being aware of hazards, being aware of other drivers.

“It’s pretty popular. You see ads all the time. Ten weeks of training, you can make $30,000 to $50,000 a year,” he said. Naples has recruiters fly in from all over to court students.

While truck driver injuries were the most common among all occupations from 1994 to 2004, they weren’t the most costly. Trucker injuries averaged $21,050 each to cover medical care, lost wages and settlements.

In that same 11-year period, Maine’s one and only mine-related work injury cost $174,935, the highest average of any injury case in the state. Additional details about the case could not be obtained last week.

Maine doesn’t have a mining industry anywhere close to West Virginia’s, where two weeks ago 12 men died after an explosion.

But tragedies like that on the national level, “make you think about, are we doing all we can do?” said Maine Bureau of Labor Standards Director Bill Peabody.

The worst workplace accident in Maine in recent history occurred in 2002 when 14 migrant forestry workers died after their van went into the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. The accident refocused attention on workplace safety, said Paul Dionne, executive director of Maine’s Workers’ Compensation Board.

“It brings safety issues back to the forefront,” he said. “That was the red flag. There’s been a resurgence since then.”

As a result, for instance, there’s now a law that nothing can be stored behind the rear axle of a 15-passenger van when it’s being used for logging work.

Deeming some work too dangerous, the state maintains a list of jobs it forbids people younger than 18 to do, including using meat slicers and circular saws or driving a forklift at. The most recent additions involve working with heights and in enclosed spaces, according to Rioux.

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