A few days before Thanksgiving in a small Virginia town called
Poquoson, Frank Gornik, 14, was removing storm debris for his
uncle’s company. The boy, a freshman in high school, fed
branches into a wood chipper. He used a shovel to help force the
branches and that shovel was grabbed by the machine and—in an
instant—swallowed the boy and killed him. Each year, 35-40 teens
die similarly unimaginable deaths in workplace accidents—tractor
rollovers, work-related car accidents, drownings in grain silos.
Here at the National Consumers League, we try to monitor these
deaths to prevent them from occurring. A decade ago, the number
of working teens who died on the job was about double what it is
today. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the
National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, federal
and state departments of labor, nonprofit organizations and
employers worked together to help bring the number of deaths
down, but we must keep working to reduce that number even
further. Sadly, although