Characterization of workers suffering serious electrical accidents in the construction industry

The occupational accidents in the construction industry continue being cause of concern in many countries. Among these accidents, those produced by electrical contact as cause of deviation show serious consequences to workers. This study analyses 2.776 accidents produced by electrical contacts during 2003-2008 in the Spanish construction industry. There are several factors that increase the risk of these accidents and our statistical analysis is based on to prove whether there is a dependency relationship between severity of this kind of accidents and variables associated to individual characteristics of workers. According to result obtained, severity of electrical accidents is related to variables such as age, occupation and experience. Thus, age groups most exposed at risk are younger workers (<25 years) and older ones (> 45 years), the most vulnerable workers are those with less than a month of length of service and those over 10 years of service and after electricians, occupations most affected are construction labourers and masons. This information allows us to achieve a basic profile of those workers who suffer the most serious consequences produced by electrical contacts in the construction industry.