Last month an Alabama jury awarded $7.5 million to a man who broke his hip at a Walmart. His foot had gotten stuck in a wood pallet. Fox and the Washington Post covered the verdict with headlines that called to mind the McDonald’s hot coffee case. Change the Pallet, a Portland, Oregon, group, says the story points to a much bigger problem.
In a release issued on December 5, 2017, the group argued that wood pallet injuries are common and often serious. Some are fatal. It also said these accidents cost Walmart, other retailers and their investors tens of millions of dollars a year.
The group listed several deaths. In 2017, a worker at a Florida Walmart was moving a stack of empty pallets. Then two of them, each about 60 pounds, fell from the top and struck her forehead. According to OSHA, she died. At Restaurant Depot in 2015, three pallets fell on an employee and fractured his skull. He later died. Then, in 2016, a Goodyear worker was crushed between a stack of heavy pallets and a wall.
A search for the word pallet in OSHA’s fatality and catastrophe summaries returns hundreds of cases. One worker crushed a hand while freeing a jammed pallet. Another was hit by a falling lumber pallet.
Deaths are only part of the picture, though. Strain injuries are far more common. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that in 2015, overexertion from lifting caused 31 percent of all worker cases, or 356,910 cases. The agency does not track pallet cases separately. Still, there are 10 billion palletized shipments a year, and a wood pallet weighs 35 to 70 pounds. So the group believes pallet-related strain injuries are likely large in number.
In 2016, IKEA Portland store manager Alessandra Zini spoke to the Oregon legislature. She said switching from wood to corrugated pallets had cut back injuries at her store. Back injuries from twisting fell by about 50 percent over four years, whereas total injuries dropped by about 30 percent.
Adam Pener, executive director of Change the Pallet, said the most troubling part is that these accidents can be prevented. If heavy wood pallets were removed, he said, the injuries and their human cost would go away too.
The group also urged reporters to look harder at the roughly 500 million wood pallets that enter the US market each year. Change the Pallet is a project of The Forward Edge Initiative. The Oregon nonprofit wants a national shift from wood to corrugated pallets.
