Texas and industrial accidents

Ira Stoll catches the New York Times being tendentious again [SmarterTimes]:

…one reason that Texas is at or near the top of the nation in terms of workplace fatalities is that it is at or near the top of the nation in terms of the number of workers and how many hours they work. If you adjust for that, and take the rate of workplace fatalities — that is, the number of fatalities from workplace injuries per 100,000 full-time workers, Texas isn’t worst in the nation, but somewhere in the middle…

Related: Josh Barro, Steven Greenhut (California as comparison).

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  • Historical note: The nation’s worst industrial disaster happened in Texas City, 1947, and it was a fertilizer explosion. Two converted Liberty ships were taking on a cargo of 3,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate when one of them caught fire and exploded, igniting and setting off the cargo in the other. The death toll was 581. This happened ten miles from Galveston, the site of the nation’s worst natural disaster, where a hurricane killed 5,000 people in 1900.