COLUMN ONE : Dangers of Life on the Line : Deaths and injuries among Latinos in L.A. County factories raise concerns about the way the safety system works--or doesn’t. A culture gap and lax enforcement are blamed.

At a meatpacking plant in Pico Rivera, a Latino immigrant opens a hamburger grinder to clean it and is pulled inside and crushed to death. A safety switch designed to automatically shut off the machine had been broken for months.

Amid the steam and heat of a fabric-dyeing factory in Compton, a vat of boiling, caustic solution blows open, burning an undocumented Mexican worker over 90% of his body. Rather than call an ambulance, his supervisor drives him to a walk-in clinic. He finally arrives at a hospital three hours later.

Inside a frozen food factory in San Fernando, a Mexican worker tries to separate pizza pies whizzing past on a conveyor belt and loses two fingers in a wrapping machine. Cleaning the same machine several months later, another Latino also loses fingers. Contrary to law, the company never notifies state safety officials of either accident.

Such is the way of life, and sometimes death, for Latinos who make everything from auto parts to zippers in the nearly 20,000 manufacturing facilities in and around Los Angeles.

More than 875,000 manufacturing workers can be found in Los Angeles County--far more than in any other county in the United States. And nearly half are Latinos--far more than any other ethnic group.

Many are recent immigrants with little more than a grade-school education or overqualified professionals who have fled war-ravaged homelands. Eager to work, they take what they can get, toiling in anonymity behind the walls of towering industrial fortresses and back-street garages, alongside rail yards and freeways, and in graffiti-covered inner-city warehouses. Typically, they trade their labor for a minimum wage in places where the machinery pounds, the air reeks and people go home dirty at the end of their shifts.

Although their labors are essential to manufacturers and the local economy, the safety of Latinos is chronically neglected in ways that leave them particularly susceptible to death, traumatic injury and disability, The Times has found.

Although Latinos represent the largest segment of the manufacturing work force, they suffer death and injury at a much higher rate than other workers. The factories where they toil are seldom inspected by safety agencies. A variety of factors, including language and cultural differences, make Latino workers reluctant to complain about hazards on the job and particularly vulnerable to accidents.

Latinos make up 36% of Los Angeles County’s overall labor force. They represent 44% of those in manufacturing, according to census figures. But they accounted for 67% of workers who lost their lives in manufacturing-related accidents between 1988 and 1992, an examination of coroner’s records shows.

More Spanish-surnamed factory workers were killed in the county in the last two years than anywhere in the United States, according to federal records.

Few of their deaths made the evening news or morning papers:

One woman was doused head to toe with boiling oil when a machine that laminates menus exploded; a man drowned in a glue vat, and another was struck in the head by a 50-pound chunk of flying metal while tooling a chrome wheel. Some were electrocuted; several were crushed by hydraulic presses or pulled into the gears of other powerful machines.

Latino workers also suffer a disproportionate number of injuries. Of more than 300 serious accidents in the county investigated by state safety officials from 1991 to 1992, three in four victims were Spanish-surnamed, records indicate.

Dozens of Latino factory laborers have been badly burned. Scores have had fingers amputated or bones broken. Many more have permanent hearing loss, or continue to work with hazardous materials that have left them in chronic ill health and, in some cases, unable to bear children.

Meanwhile, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of less severe injuries never come to the attention of authorities because employers are not required to report them.

A six-month Times study of Latinos in manufacturing found that:

* Cal/OSHA, the state agency whose task is protecting Latinos and other workers, is so underfunded and understaffed that it does little to prevent accidents. Rarely do inspectors visit factories unless there already has been a death or serious injury on the job. Last year, records show, only about 4% of factories were inspected in Cal/OSHA’s Los Angeles administrative region, which encompasses Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

When accidents occur, Cal/OSHA has so few Spanish-speaking inspectors based in the Los Angeles area that they must frequently rely on the companies they are investigating to provide translators, according to sources in the agency.

* Although the bulk of California manufacturing is located in and around Los Angeles, the region has proportionately far fewer Cal/OSHA inspectors than other areas of the state. The ratio of health and safety inspectors to manufacturing employees is four times greater in the San Francisco area and six times greater in Sacramento and the rest of the Central Valley.

One reason for the disparity, Cal/OSHA officials say, is that the agency assigns its personnel primarily on the basis of complaints. Cal/OSHA receives relatively few complaints about working conditions from Latino laborers--but many from state office employees in its Sacramento region.

* In violation of state law, Los Angeles County for years failed to maintain an occupational health program that, critics say, would protect industrial workers by providing safety training and monitoring workplaces. The program, according to county health officials, was phased out more than 10 years ago as a cost-saving measure.

“I think if the dangerous jobs were taken by people with more political clout . . . this would not have happened,” said Dr. Shirley Fannin, director of disease control for the county. “But the people in these jobs have . . . no real knowledge of how to complain effectively, so there is no program.”

Facing continued budget woes, state legislators recently passed a law suspending until July, 1994, the requirement that counties operate their own occupational health programs.

* Latino immigrants with rural backgrounds are often given little training or protective equipment before being hired to operate heavy machinery or handle toxic materials that can kill or maim them.

Many lie about their lack of experience to land a job, while others are given instruction in languages they do not understand.

* Thousands of chemicals, heavy metals and other potentially toxic substances are used each day in local factories. However, lead is the only substance being studied to determine its effect on workers.

Latinos account for about two-thirds of adults poisoned by lead in Los Angeles County, county health records show.

* When undocumented Latino factory laborers are seriously injured, their employers do not always summon emergency help. Instead of being rushed by ambulance to burn centers or hospitals, victims often are driven by co-workers or supervisors to walk-in clinics that do not have the resources to treat them. Sometimes it takes hours before they receive proper medical attention.

Despite such incidents, statistics show that work-related accidents in California and other industrial states have generally declined in recent decades.

A report to be published this fall by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health shows that from 1980 to 1989, manufacturing employees in California were killed on the job at a rate of 3.7 per 100,000 workers. That compares to 3.9 deaths per 100,000 workers in Pennsylvania, 3.6 per 100,000 in Illinois, 3 per 100,000 in Michigan and 1.9 per 100,000 in New York.

Manufacturers’ lobbyists and trade associations contend that most business owners realize a healthy worker is a productive one and increasingly do everything that they can to ensure the safety of employees--regardless of ethnicity or place of origin.

“You cannot have a separate set of rules for immigrants,” said Willie Washington, director of safety and health issues for the California Manufacturers Assn. “It just wouldn’t wash.”

Even when precautions are taken, Washington and others note, the potential for injury remains wherever people work around heavy machinery or toxic substances.

But that potential is heightened among Latinos in Los Angeles County, especially recent immigrants. Many are not conversant in English and may not understand safety instructions, or they simply do not realize the hazards they face. Others are afraid to speak out about working conditions--either because they are fearful of losing their jobs or of being deported.

“The working conditions (are) still so rudimentary in a lot of these places, it’s shocking,” said Diane Factor, a former state industrial hygienist who works for a UCLA program that educates employees about toxic dangers. “The average person just doesn’t realize what kind of blood and sweat go into the (products) they use every day. They don’t realize the risks these people take, or the price they pay, just to work.”

*

No government or private agency keeps national statistics on the ethnicity of workers who are killed and hurt on the job.

But New Jersey officials reported last year that Latino workers there were nearly twice as likely as African-Americans--and more than five times as likely as Anglos--to suffer job-related finger amputations.

Surgeons at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago found that more than half of the Latino workers they treated had suffered serious injuries on the job, including amputations and crushed bones, compared to about one-fifth of Anglo workers.

The number of job-related casualties among Latinos is believed to be highest in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, which has more Latino residents than the New York, Chicago and Miami census areas combined.

“It’s not that Hispanics are any more vulnerable or prone to injury,” said Dr. Benjamin E. Lesin, a Van Nuys hand surgeon. “It’s because they’re the ones doing the manual work in our society.”

Of the more than 100 patients Lesin sees each week, he said, more than half are Latinos who have been injured on the job.

Between 1988 and 1992, coroner’s records show, 289 people died in Los Angeles County as a result of work-related injuries or diseases. The majority were construction workers killed on the job and retirees who succumbed to diseases associated with exposure to asbestos, silicon dust or other irritants.

At least 43 people, all but one of them men, died as a result of manufacturing-related accidents. Of those, 29--or about two-thirds--had Spanish surnames.

Although the rate of deaths was much higher for the assembly lines of Detroit, the steel mills of Pennsylvania and the oil fields of Texas, more factory workers were killed in Los Angeles County in 1991 and 1992 than in any other industrialized county in the United States, federal safety records show. More Latinos died in the factories of Los Angeles County than the combined number of workers of all ethnicities killed in factory accidents in New York and Chicago.

Luis Tellez, 26, was among them.

At 6 a.m. sharp, Tellez would arrive at Orange Coast Meat Products in Pico Rivera to work in the packaging department. In the afternoon, he would truck fresh hamburger to local wholesalers and school districts. When the last load was delivered, he would return to the plant and scrub out the meat-grinding machines.

On Feb. 27, 1992, after returning from a delivery in Vernon, Tellez climbed atop a step stool and raised the hopper lid of a stainless steel Butcher Boy-brand meat grinder.

The grinder is designed with a safety switch that automatically stops the machine’s inner workings when the lid is lifted. But the safety switch on this machine had not functioned for more than six months, according to workers.

As Tellez reached into the grinder, its rotating paddle bars apparently snagged the sleeve of his shop coat, pulling him in. About 10 minutes later, records show, plant manager Richard Antifae walked by and noticed Tellez’s right leg sticking out of the meat grinder.

“Luis,” Antifae shouted as he rushed forward to shut off the machine, “are you OK?” He got no response.

Tellez’s head, neck and chest had been crushed.

Cal/OSHA fined Orange Coast $19,200--including $18,000 for not having an operable safety switch on the grinder. Although meat inspectors came virtually every day to Orange Coast to ensure sanitary conditions, the year-old company had never been inspected by Cal/OSHA to make sure that workers were safe, records show.

“(Cal/OSHA’s) one of the biggest jokes around,” said Antifae, 45, who has spent most of his adult life as a meatpacker. “You never see them. They only come around when something happens.”

Orange Coast has since gone out of business. The company’s owner, Mike Galina, could not be located for comment. Company attorney Arthur H. Barens said that he could not discuss the case because of pending litigation.

If anyone was to blame for Tellez’s death, according to Antifae, it was the dead man. “That machine was in perfect operating condition,” he said. “If anybody did anything with that machine, it was Luis.”

Tellez had never received any formal training at Orange Coast--nor had any of his non-English speaking co-workers interviewed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which investigated Tellez’s death as a possible homicide, records show.

Because of language differences, English-speaking or foreign-born factory bosses often have difficulty conveying safety instructions to Latino workers.

“There are so few employers who provide training in the language of their workers that a lot of their training is useless,” said Jan Chatten-Brown, former head of a county district attorney’s unit that prosecutes workplace violations.

Salvadoran immigrant Alejandro Quintanilla operated a table saw at the Mica Furniture Co. in Los Angeles. He and his immediate supervisor spoke only Spanish. The company’s owner only spoke Vietnamese.

In June, 1986, while using a metal guide to cut across a sheet of plywood, Quintanilla’s left hand slipped into the saw’s whirling blade, severing his forefinger and severely lacerating three other fingers.

The saw’s manual clearly states that a guide should not be used when cutting a piece of wood across the grain, according to court records. But Quintanilla could not read English.

California workers’ compensation laws largely prevent injured workers from suing their employers. Quintanilla sued the saw’s vendor, Sears, alleging that design flaws had caused the accident, rendering his hand useless.

Attorneys for Sears argued that the saw was not flawed. Quintanilla’s injury, they said, was caused by his own negligence and by his employer having failed to properly train him. Quintanilla’s employer said that the injured worker had received sufficient training for the tasks he was assigned.

The jury decided in Sears’ favor.

To be injured on the job can be traumatic for any worker. But the emotional implications may run even deeper among Latino men who, counselors say, traditionally equate their virility with their ability to work.

Marlene de Rios, an associate clinical psychiatry professor at UC Irvine, said that many of the more than 100 injured Latinos she counsels each month are left with feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness after being hurt on the job.

“All they have to sell in the marketplace is their body,” de Rios said, “and when the body is ruined or disabled, it’s really quite profound because these are largely uneducated people with few other options.”

Saul Cardenas of Pacoima, a 36-year-old father of seven, admits to contemplating suicide after allegedly being blinded on the job three years ago.

Cardenas picked strawberries and sewed garments before landing a job in 1989 through a temporary service as a drill press operator at a small aluminum products plant in Chatsworth. The job paid $260 for a 48-hour week.

In June, 1990, while replacing a broken drill bit, Cardenas slipped on a patch of grease and slammed his forehead into a steel overhang. Within minutes, he said, he went blind in his right eye and eventually lost most of the sight in his left.

No longer able to work, Cardenas spends his days in a run-down rented house in Pacoima, listening to Spanish-language television.

The accident has left him not only blind and unemployed, he said, but impotent.

“I have no desire to live,” Cardenas said, sobbing, as two of his sons tried to comfort him.

Last year, after being examined by eye doctors hired by his former employer, United Temporary Personnel Services, Cardenas’ disability pay was halted. The company’s doctors concluded Cardenas, who said he had never experienced vision problems before, probably had a pre-existing case of glaucoma.

“Coming from Mexico, I doubt he ever had an eye examination,” said Dena Jastroch, senior claims examiner for Transamerica Insurance Co., which covers United Temporary. “There’s injuries, and then there are injuries. This wasn’t” an injury.

An ophthalmologist who examined Cardenas at his attorney’s behest found otherwise, medical records show.

“Mr. Cardenas has had severe optic nerve damage in both eyes, right eye worse than left,” wrote Dr. Paul Lee of the Doheny Eye Institute. “The (origin) of this is uncertain, but it is probably related to (the accident) as the inciting cause.”

*

Jose Garcia spent 20 years, 12 hours a day, sometimes six days a week, driving a forklift at Imperial Metals, an aluminum processing plant in South Los Angeles. Noise inside the factory was so loud, he said, that workers had to shout to be heard.

“When they turned off the compressors and the other machines,” said Garcia, 55, “you could still hear them buzzing in your ears.”

About 40 people worked at Imperial Metals, Garcia said, virtually all of them Latino immigrants.

About nine years ago, the buzzing in Garcia’s ears worsened. He went to a company doctor who prescribed eardrops and told him he was fit to go back to work.

Imperial Metals went out of business in 1991 and Garcia remains unemployed. He can hear virtually nothing in one ear and has little hearing in the other.

He said he never thought to ask the company for ear protection and did not buy earplugs for himself. Cal/OSHA could find no inspection records for the company.

“You want to support your family,” Garcia said, “so you keep quiet and you do your work.”

Such attitudes are not uncommon among Latino factory workers. Fearing termination--or deportation in the case of undocumented immigrants--few complain openly about working conditions, no matter how bad those conditions may be.

Many Latino immigrants come from countries where abuse and injury are common in the workplace, labor-rights advocates note, so they have little expectation that working conditions will be any better in Southern California. They willingly accept hazardous duties either because they are ignorant of the dangers or because their salaries--even at minimum wage--are better than in their homelands.

“The economy has made people, especially those with undocumented status, desperate for work and more willing to take any job on any terms,” USC sociologist Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo said. “No one wants to complain when you can look on any street corner in the city and find any number of people waiting to take your place.”

Their willingness to silently endure, according to others, can foster an even greater disregard for worker safety among some employers. “The racism is not only implicit, it’s overt,” said Los Angeles attorney George Almodovar, who represents Latinos injured at work. “I see it every day. You’ve got employers who think these people are dumb and uneducated and therefore can be abused. It permeates the whole system.”

Others disagree.

“The vast majority of employers look at their employees as having no country of origin and no skin color,” said Bob Reeves, a former Cal/OSHA inspector who is director of industrial safety and health for the California Chamber of Commerce. “They are interested in producing the best service or product they can, and to completely ignore the health and safety of their employees would contradict that goal completely.”

However, critics contend that manufacturers frequently put their own interests ahead of those of Latino workers who are hurt on the job.

The Times found half a dozen cases in which employers never summoned emergency help after Latino workers were gravely injured. Plaintiffs’ attorneys contend that bosses are sometimes hesitant to call out of fear that they will get in trouble if it is known that their workers are undocumented.

“Calling an ambulance automatically (alerts) the police and other officials,” said Javier F. Trujillo, a Wilmington lawyer who has represented dozens of undocumented factory workers injured on the job. “They don’t want outsiders coming in unless they’re prepared” for the visit.

For one such worker, Mario Martinez, the consequences were particularly dire.

Martinez, now 23, landed a minimum wage job in 1988 at the Pacific Coast Dyeing and Finishing Co. in Compton after coming across the border at Tijuana. The company employs more than 300 workers, almost all Latinos.

On Oct. 3, 1989, while Martinez strained to open the pressurized hatch on a cloth-dyeing vat, the hatch blew open, dousing him with a boiling, caustic solution.

“I looked down,” Martinez said, “and all of the skin on my body was falling off by itself.” Other than rubber boots, he was wearing no protective clothing. The company, according to Martinez and another former employee, would issue workers protective equipment whenever corporate officers or “Americans” were touring the plant--and would take the equipment away after the tour was over.

A former co-worker said he tried to lift Martinez off the floor by his arms and was horrified as a sheet of skin came off in his hands. A supervisor arrived after what Martinez estimated to be about 10 minutes and told the injured worker, “Let’s go outside so I can take you to a clinic.”

Martinez said he staggered out to a company van--but the supervisor forgot the ignition key. The supervisor returned with the key about 20 minutes later, Martinez said, but the van wouldn’t start.

Another supervisor, Martinez said, volunteered to drive him to the clinic in his car. But before Martinez was allowed into the car, he said, the supervisor got a sheet of nylon and placed it over the seat so Martinez’s burned flesh would not dirty the upholstery.

Martinez was driven to a medical clinic in North Long Beach, where a doctor put an ice bag on his chest. He said he blacked out from the pain and awoke in an ambulance.

More than three hours after the accident, he arrived at the burn unit at Torrance Memorial Medical Center, records show.

With second- and third-degree burns over 92% of his body--only his feet were left unburned--Martinez spent nearly four months in the hospital.

Had Martinez received prompt treatment, doctors say, scarring could have been considerably reduced. As it is, his body and scalp remain painfully stiff with thick scar tissue.

Martinez filed a lawsuit, alleging that his employers had willfully denied him “adequate and immediate medical care.” Earlier this year, he reached a nearly $4-million settlement with the company, the manufacturer of the dyeing vat and its distributors.

Pacific Coast Dyeing and Finishing’s safety manager, David Kim, told state officials that the company had improved safety measures and equipment after Martinez’s accident. In a letter to Cal/OSHA, Kim noted that the company “didn’t have any problems or serious accidents before this case. . . .”

Company records show that in the 10 months preceding Martinez’s accident, at least 11 other workers--10 of them Latinos--suffered injuries on the job that caused them to take time off. One worker who was described only as having injured his right middle finger was off work for 38 days.

The company’s owner, Edmund Kim, did not return telephone messages left by The Times and could not be located when a reporter went to Pacific Coast’s neatly landscaped, red brick factory. The company’s attorney, David B. Bloom, said that he could not comment on the Martinez case because of litigation, or on any matters relating to the health and safety of other workers.

Cal/OSHA’s investigation subsequently blamed Martinez for the accident. Safety inspectors said he should not have tried to open the vat without authorization from a supervisor. The company was cited only for waiting 15 days to notify Cal/OSHA of the accident, but was not fined.

State law requires that an employer notify Cal/OSHA immediately when a worker sustains an injury that requires hospitalization for 24 hours or more.

That does not always happen.

Consider the case of Fausto Soto and Blas Vargas, who worked at the Oh Boy! frozen pizza factory in San Fernando. Both lost fingers last year on the same packaging machine.

It was Soto’s job to make sure that the pizzas were evenly spaced as they came down a conveyor belt. Too close together, or too far apart, and the pizzas would be destroyed in the whirling blades of a machine that wraps them in hot plastic.

On April 28, 1992, the conveyor belt was running at top speed, he said. There were so many pizzas flying past him that it was hard to keep up.

As Soto, 32, tried to separate some pizzas, the wrapping machine lopped off parts of two fingers on his right hand.

With blood spurting, Soto pulled his mangled hand free and bandaged it with the first thing he could find--a pizza wrapper. A co-worker drove him to the hospital.

Plant managers never called Cal/OSHA because, records said, they were too busy with labor negotiations.

More than four months later, after consulting with an attorney, Soto notified Cal/OSHA of the accident. Although he had been in California since 1977, the Mexican immigrant had never heard of the health and safety agency.

Cal/OSHA fined Oh Boy! $250 for failing to report the accident.

About five months later, Vargas was cleaning the same machine for the first time when he, too, lost fingers.

Vargas, 46, said that he had been instructed to wipe the machine down with paper towels while it was running--a clear violation of safety standards. Once again, Oh Boy! managers did not report the injury to Cal/OSHA.

Vargas said he did not know of Cal/OSHA’s existence and called the agency only after a chance encounter with Soto.

Oh Boy! was fined $10,350 for allegedly failing to properly instruct Vargas before he attempted to clean the machine. The company also was fined $900 for not having notified Cal/OSHA of the accident.

The head of Oh Boy!, Pietro Vitale, declined to discuss the two men’s injuries or any others at his plant.

“It’s not something that happens very often,” Vitale noted.

Both Soto and Vargas have filed lawsuits.

“I would be happy,” Soto said, “if I could just have my fingers back.”

Next: Latinos, factories and toxics.

Death on the Job

Among the 10 most populous states, California ranks fifth in the rate of workers killed in all types of jobs, including manufacturing: State: Fatality rate per 100,000 workers Texas: 11.7 Florida: 9.3 Illinois: 6.9 North Carolina: 7.2 California: 6.5 Pennsylvania: 6.1 Michigan: 5.3 Ohio: 4.8 New Jersey: 3.4 New York: 2.5 Source: National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, based on 1980-88 statistics

Who Does the Work?

Latinos outnumber all other ethnic groups in Los Angeles County’s manufacturing workplaces. In other segments of local industry, they make up a much smaller share of full-time workers. Total employed in manufacturing Latinos: 44% Anglos: 40% Asians: 9% Blacks: 6% Other: 1% * Total employed in transportation, communications, utilities Anglos: 46.5% Latinos: 26% Blacks: 17% Asians: 10% Other: 1% * Total employed in construction/mining Anglos: 48% Latinos: 41% Asians: 5% Blacks: 5% Other: 1% * * Figure is less than 1%.

Source: U.S. Census Public Use Microdata Sample.

(Orange County Edition, A33) Who Does the Work?

Whites outnumber all other ethnic groups in Orange County’s manufacturing workplaces. Total employed in manufacturing Anglos: 63% Latinos: 23% Asians: 12% Blacks: 2% Other: 1% * Total employed in construction/mining Anglos: 72% Latinos: 23% Asians: 4% Blacks: 1% Other: 1% * Total employed in transportation, communications, utilities Anglos: 74% Latinos: 15% Asians: 8% Blacks: 3% Other: 1% * * Figure is actually less than 1%

Source: U.S. Census Public Use Microdata Sample, 5% sample

Where the Work Is

There are nearly 20,000 manufacturing facilities employing more than 875,000 workers in Los Angeles County--more than in any other county in the United States. Industries in Los Angeles County vary widely. They include:

Number of Number of Type firms production workers Printing and publishing 2,745 60,151 Industrial machinery 2,574 59,062 Fabricated metal products 1,994 70,766 Electronics 1,084 61,064 Misc. manufacturing industries 937 19,936 Furniture and fixtures 883 34,404 Rubber and misc. plastic products 780 34,623 Food 680 47,329 Chemicals and related products 595 23,608 Transportation equipment 634 185,196 Stone, clay and glass products 445 16,174

(Orange County Edition, A34) Where the Work Is

In Orange County, electronics and industrial machinery firms employ almost one-third of the total manufacturing work force.

Number of Total number of Type establishments production workers Food 151 8,703 Furniture and fixtures 196 9,552 Chemicals and related products 174 9,348 Printing and publishing 1,005 19,219 Rubber and misc. plastic products 349 18,981 Stone, clay and glass products 157 3,975 Fabricated metal products 603 22,391 Industrial machinery 1,067 29,805 Electronics 554 33,844 Transportation equipment 209 18,416 Misc. manufacturing industries 292 4,562

A Deadly Record

While the rate of death among factory workers is greater in several other industrialized counties in the country, Los Angeles County sustained the most factory deaths between 1991 and 1992.

Manufacturing Factory deaths Rate of death per County employees 1991-1992 100,000 workers Los Angeles 875,837 21 2.4 Cook (Chicago) 477,360 12 2.5 New York 215,558 0 - Wayne (Detroit) 202,451 11 5.4 Harris (Houston) 163,567 15 9.1 Cuyahoga (Cleveland) 160,486 3 1.9 Dade (Miami) 86,375 1 1.1 Allegheny (Pittsburgh) 82,521 9 10.9

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990 data; U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration; Los Angeles County Office of Coroner

Counties With Most Manufacturing Employees

Orange County ranks third in the United States in the number of manufacturing employees, with more than New York, Detroit and Houston. Los Angeles: 875,837 Cook (Chicago): 477,360 Orange County: 223,049 New York: 215,558 Wayne (Detroit): 202,451 Harris (Houston): 163,567 Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990 data; U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration