Youth

During this season of high work activity for teens, some sobering statistics to consider:

Every year, approximately 200,000 teenagers in the United States are injured on the job, and about 70 teens are killed at work. Every six minutes, a teenager is injured seriously enough on the job to require treatment in a hospital emergency room.

Are these numbers acceptable to anyone? Solutions, anyone?

CARP - the Canadian Association for Retired Persons - doesn't want to be considered that anymore; they're now Canada's Association for the 50Plus. That doesn't bode well for the younger generation.

According to Mose Znamier, the new executive director of CARP, Baby Boomers - he calls them Zoomers (Boomers + Zip) - are not taking the off-ramp from work like their preceding generation did approaching 65.

Teen Crushed to Death by Forklift reads the headline today: a 16-year-old kid on the second day of his job at a Rona lumberyard in Alberta. Apparently Mitchell Tanner was hanging off the side of a forklift as it was being driven, and the vehicle tipped over on top of Mitchell.

I was blown away by a Grade 8 student's question at the safety presentation I was giving at Earl Beatty Junior and Senior Public School in Toronto, Ontario. The kid stood up and asked:

"What about safety requirements for volunteers?"  

He's only 10 years old but he's been visiting construction sites for several years, with his dad - and he's always fully decked out in safety gear. Philipe Mathers of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, says he wants to be a safety inspector when he grows up.

I came across this news item, "Never Too Young to be Safe" and thought it was worth sharing.