Money talks, as the saying goes, and a recently published paper on the annual cost of work-related injuries and illnesses should get policymakers to listen up. The number is staggering: $250 Billion, and it's a figure on par with health conditions like cancer, coronary heart disease, and diabetes that attract much more attention and research funding.
The author, J. Paul Leigh, PhD, a professor of health economics at University of California Davis, assembled data from more than a dozen sources to estimate the annual economic burden of occupational injuries and illnesses. Using data from 2007…