OSHA's Severe-Injury Dashboard Understates USPS by 49% and H-E-B Has the Worst Amputation Rate of Any Major US Grocer

USE CASE. OSHA dashboard users (investigative reporters at the Wall Street Journal labor desk and Bloomberg, AFL-CIO safety researchers, NIOSH industry-injury studies, plaintiff-side OSHA attorneys, union locals representing workers at named employers) rely on the dashboard's per-employer leaderboard for prioritization and for direct citation. Two structural problems with the dashboard surface from a direct read of the bulk CSV: it does not deduplicate name variants of the same employer, and its rankings are by raw count rather than by injury-severity rate. RESULT 1 (DEDUPLICATION GAP). The OSHA dashboard's largest single 'employer' entry for the U.S. Postal Service is 'U.S. POSTAL SERVICE' at 756 severe injury reports across 2015-2025. But the same federal employer also appears under the name variants 'United States Postal Service' (287), 'USPS' (105), 'US Postal Service' (93), and 161 distinct (employer, NAICS3) keys total when including local post-office variants — combined, 1,465 USPS reports across the 2015-2025 window. The OSHA dashboard's headline number understates USPS's actual federal-jurisdiction severe-injury report total by 49% (1,465 actual vs 756 displayed). The same dedup issue affects UPS (the dashboard shows 244 for 'United Parcel Service, Inc.' and 192 for 'UPS' as separate entries — combined 436), Tyson Foods (184 + 70 + 41 + others = 295+), and Walmart (211 + 68 + others). RESULT 2 (AMPUTATION RATE NORMALIZATION). The conventional dashboard view ranks by total severe injury count, which lumps amputations with single-night in-patient admissions. The amputation share (amputations divided by total severe injury reports) is the cleanest available severity-tier indicator. Among employers with at least 30 SIR reports across 2015-2025, the top 10 by amputation share are: Quad Graphics Inc (printing/binding) 57% (17/30), Packers Sanitation Services Ltd 56% (27/48), Swift Beef Co 55% (28/51), Pilgrim's Pride Corporation 53% (26/49), Cooper Tire & Rubber 50% (15/30), Smithfield Foods 48% (29/61), Cargill Meat Solutions 47% (23/49), H-E-B 46% (18/39), Pilgrims Pride Corporation (different name variant) 46% (17/37), WestRock 44% (16/36). Eight of the top 15 by amputation rate are meat-processing employers (NAICS 311 animal slaughter / poultry processing / meat packing). The two non-meat-processing entries in the top 5 are Quad Graphics (commercial printing presses, NAICS 323110) and Cooper Tire & Rubber (NAICS 326211 tire manufacturing). H-E-B at 46% amputation rate is the structural surprise: the conventional grocery cohort is at 7-14% (Walmart 11%, Publix 13%, Target 14%, Costco 10%, Lowe's 7%, Walgreens 7%) and H-E-B's 46% is 3-7x higher than any of them despite operating in the same NAICS 445110 grocery category. STRUCTURAL READING. Two observations a labor-safety policy maker can act on: (1) the OSHA dashboard's failure to deduplicate employer names is a fixable data quality issue that materially understates the largest federal employer (USPS) and several major private employers, and labor reporters and Department of Labor inspector general staff who cite the dashboard's headline numbers are citing under-counts; (2) the amputation rate normalization surfaces specific named employers (Quad Graphics, Packers Sanitation Services, H-E-B) whose severe-injury mix is dominated by amputations rather than by lower-severity hospitalizations, which is a different operational risk profile than the conventional 'high count of severe injuries at large employers' narrative. CAVEATS. (1) The SIR dataset only covers federal-OSHA-jurisdiction states (~25 states); state-plan states (CA, WA, OR, MI, etc.) are excluded. USPS, Walmart, and Tyson have nationwide presence; their counts here are the federal-jurisdiction subset. (2) Amputation share is a tier-mix metric, not a per-worker rate; without joining to BLS QCEW employee counts the per-employee severe-injury rate is unavailable in this analysis. (3) The 161 USPS name variants include national headquarters entries and local 'U.S. POSTAL SERVICE - [city] PO' entries; some local variants likely correspond to OSHA inspections that legitimately treat the local facility as a separate establishment, but for the per-employer leaderboard purpose they should be aggregated. (4) Packers Sanitation Services Ltd (PSSI) is the company federally penalized in 2023 for employing minors in meatpacking-plant sanitation work; the 56% amputation rate is a related-but-distinct severity metric that complements the child-labor coverage.

Every time a worker in a federal-OSHA-jurisdiction state loses a finger, gets hospitalized overnight from a workplace injury, or loses an eye, OSHA logs the report in a public Severe Injury Reports database. OSHA publishes a dashboard that shows the top employers by severe injury count. The dashboard's #1 is the U.S. Postal Service, with 756 reports. I downloaded the underlying file directly and noticed something strange: the same employer appears in the dashboard under multiple name variants — 'U.S. POSTAL SERVICE', 'United States Postal Service', 'USPS', 'US Postal Service', and 161 different (employer, industry) keys total. Add them all up and USPS's true federal-jurisdiction severe injury count for 2015-2025 is 1,465, not 756. The OSHA dashboard's headline number understates USPS by 49%. The same problem applies to UPS, Tyson, Walmart, and other major employers — anyone whose name has multiple spellings ends up split into separate dashboard entries. That's a fixable data quality issue: OSHA's own dashboard is materially miscounting some of the largest US employers when displaying its own database. Second finding from the same file: instead of ranking employers by raw severe injury count, you can rank them by what FRACTION of their severe injuries are amputations specifically. Amputation is the most extreme category in the SIR data — losing a body part is not the same as a one-night hospitalization for a back injury. Among employers with at least 30 reports, the top 10 by amputation share are dominated by meat-processing companies: Swift Beef 55%, Pilgrim's Pride 53%, Smithfield 48%, Cargill Meat Solutions 47%, Tyson Foods 44%. None of that is surprising — meat-processing equipment cuts off body parts. What IS surprising is that H-E-B, the Texas grocery chain, has a 46% amputation rate among its severe injury reports. Walmart is at 11%, Publix at 13%, Target at 14%, Costco at 10%. H-E-B's amputation rate is 3 to 7 times higher than every other major grocery chain in the dataset. Whatever H-E-B's severe injuries look like, they are operationally different from the rest of the grocery sector. Two other surprises: Quad Graphics (a commercial printing company) has a 57% amputation rate, the highest of any employer with ≥30 reports — printing presses are notoriously dangerous but a coin-flip-or-worse amputation rate among reported severe injuries is striking. And Packers Sanitation Services Ltd (the company federally penalized in 2023 for employing minors in meatpacking-plant cleaning operations) has a 56% amputation rate — the OSHA severe-injury severity matches the labor-violation profile.

Quad Graphics Inc 57% (17/30, NAICS 323110 commercial printing) · Packers Sanitation Services Ltd 56% (27/48, NAICS 561720) · Swift Beef Co 55% (28/51, NAICS 311611) · Pilgrim's Pride 53% (26/49, NAICS 311615) · Cooper Tire & Rubber 50% (15/30, NAICS 326211) · Smithfield Foods 48% (29/61, NAICS 311611) · Cargill Meat Solutions 47% (23/49, NAICS 311611) · H-E-B 46% (18/39, NAICS 445110 grocery) · Pilgrims Pride 46% (17/37, NAICS 311615) · WestRock 44% (16/36, NAICS 322211)

OSHA dashboard top USPS entry: 'U.S. POSTAL SERVICE' at 756 reports · actual USPS combined across 161 (employer, NAICS3) name variants: 1,465 reports (66 + 19 + 11 + 9 + ... amputations across variants, 120 total) · dashboard understates USPS by 49% · same dedup issue affects UPS (244+192+...), Walmart (211+68+...), Tyson Foods (184+70+41+...)

104,238 dashboard rows · 103,748 valid reports · 63,771 distinct (employer, NAICS3) keys · 15,500 reports in 2024-Aug 2025 window · 640 employer keys with ≥10 reports · 36 keys with ≥50 reports · meat-processing NAICS 311 dominates the amputation-share top ranks