Adolescent workers

Scope

Federal child labor laws prohibit some work associated with large numbers of deaths and serious injuries such as driving a motor vehicle and operating a forklift. Other hazardous activities, such as working alone in retail businesses and cooking, are typically permitted.

Regulatory citations

The primary law governing the employment of workers under age 18 is the Fair Labor Standards Act, which is enforced by the Wage and Hour Division of the Employment Standards Administration within the Department of Labor. Child labor provisions of this act are designed to protect the educational opportunities of minors and prohibit their employment in jobs and under conditions that could harm their health or well-being.

States also have child labor laws. They may be stricter than Federal child labor laws.

Recommendations

NIOSH recommends that employers take the following steps to protect adolescent workers:

• Know and comply with child labor laws and occupational safety and health regulations that apply to your business. Post these regulations for workers to read.
• Assess and eliminate the potential for injury or illness associated with tasks required of adolescents.
• Provide training to ensure that adolescents recognize hazards and are competent in safe work practices.
• Routinely verify that the adolescents continue to recognize hazards and employ safe work practices.
• Evaluate equipment that adolescents are required to operate to ensure that it is both legal and safe for use by adolescents.
• Ensure that adolescents are appropriately supervised to prevent injuries and hazardous exposures.
• Involve supervisors and experienced workers in developing an injury and illness prevention program and in identifying and solving safety and health problems.

Here is a list of duties declared hazardous under Federal child labor laws:

• Manufacturing and storing explosives;
• Motor vehicle driving and working as outside helper;
• Coal mining;
• Logging and sawmilling;
• Operating power-driven woodworking machines;
• Work involving exposure to radioactive substances;
• Operating power-driven hoisting apparatus;
• Operating power-driven metal-forming, punching, and shearing machines;
• Mining, other than coal mining;
• Power-driven bakery machines;
• Slaughtering, meat-packing, processing, or rendering;
• Operating power-driven paper products machines;
• Manufacturing brick, tile, and kindred products;
• Operating power-driven circular saws, band saws, and guillotine shears;
• Working in wrecking, demolition, and shipbreaking operations;
• Working in roofing operations;
• Working in excavation operations.

Work hour restrictions

The basic rules for when and where a youth may work are:

• Youth 18 years or older may perform any job, whether hazardous or not, for unlimited hours.
• Youth 16 or 17 years old may perform any non-hazardous job for unlimited hours.
• Youth 14 and 15 years old may work outside school hours in various non-manufacturing, non-mining, non-hazardous jobs. They cannot work more than:
  • 3 hours a day on school days;
  • 18 hours per week in school weeks;
  • 8 hours a day on non-school days;
  • 40 hours per week when school is not in session.

Working in or around motor vehicles

Motor-vehicle-related deaths accounted for nearly one-fourth of the work-related injury deaths of 16- and 17-year-olds. These deaths include those of workers who were drivers and passengers in motor vehicles, pedestrians, and bicyclists involved in crashes with motor vehicles.

The following jobs are examples of work that may be associated with motor-vehicle-related deaths and injuries:

• Delivery of passengers or goods (such as furniture, appliances, parcels, messages, newspapers, pizzas, groceries, and pharmaceuticals);
• Services that require routine travel to provide home-based service such as cable television installation and repair, appliance repair, and landscaping services;
• Residential trash pickup;
• Road maintenance (such as operation of sweepers);
• Work at road construction sites (including flagpersons); and
• Work at gas stations, truck stops and auto repair shops.

Operating tractors and other heavy equipment

Machine-related deaths were the second leading cause of work-related injury death for 16- and 17-year-olds. Tractors alone accounted for 44 percent of the machine-related deaths.

The following lists examples of heavy equipment associated with deaths:

• Tractors used in settings such as construction;
• Forklifts;
• Excavating machinery such as backhoes, bulldozers, steam and power shovels, and trenchers;
• Loaders such as bucket loaders, end loaders, and front-end loaders; and
• Road grading and surfacing machinery such as asphalt and mortar spreaders, graders, levelers, planers, scrapers, road linemarking machinery, steam rollers, and road pavers.

Working near electrical hazards

Electrocution was the third leading cause of work-related injury death among 16- and 17-year-olds. Electrocution accounted for a greater proportion of work-related injury deaths in adolescents than in adults. Contact with an energized power line caused more than 50 percent of the electrocutions.

The following types of work pose an increased risk for electrocution:

• Using poles, pipes, and ladders near overhead power lines during construction work, painting, and pool cleaning;
• Working on roofs to perform jobs such as roofing, roof maintenance, cleaning of rain gutters, installation and repair of heating and cooling equipment, installation and repair of television antennas, and cleaning of chimneys and smoke stacks;
• Operating or contacting boomed vehicles, such as bucket trucks, telescopic forklifts, and telescopic cranes;
• Using grain augers and moving grain elevators and irrigation pipes near power lines;
• Tree trimming; and
• Wiring of electrical circuits and other work involving exposure to electrical circuitry, including work performed by electricians’ helpers.

Working at jobs with a high risk for homicide

Assaults and violent acts account for approximately one-fourth of all work-related injury deaths of adolescents. Most work-related homicides are associated with robbery.

The following types of jobs involve increased risk for work-related homicide:

• Working alone or in small numbers in businesses where money is exchanged with the public and the risk for robbery-related homicide is high—for example, in convenience stores, gas stations, restaurants, hotels, and motels; and
• Working alone in contact with large numbers of people where there may be opportunities for uninterrupted assaults for example, working in motel housekeeping, delivery of passengers or goods, and door-to-door sales.

Working with fall hazards

Falls were the fifth leading cause of work-related injury death for 16- and 17-year-olds; they accounted for 8 percent of these deaths. Forty percent of fatal falls were from or out of a building or other structure. Fatal falls were documented for distances ranging from 10 feet to 14 floors.

The following types of jobs are associated with work-related falls:

• Using ladders and scaffolds to work at heights—such as, in building construction, building maintenance (brick cleaning and window washing), painting, and harvesting fruit from trees;
• Working on structures or near openings in building construction;
• Working on roofs; and
• Tree trimming.

Cooking and working around cooking appliances

Severe burns are a risk for adolescents involved in cooking. Approximately 5,000 adolescents sought emergency-room treatment each year for work-related burns associated with cooking or working in a place where food was prepared.

The following types of work involve burn hazards associated with cooking:

• Cooking in restaurants and other commercial settings;
• Servicing cooking equipment—adding, filtering, and removing hot grease from fryers, and cleaning grills and fryers and their associated vents; and
• Working near cooking appliances where workers may slip into or against equipment.

Hazardous manual lifting

Overexertion accounted for approximately 4,500 work-related injuries of adolescents treated in hospital emergency rooms; about 2,500 of these injuries were attributed to lifting. These estimates are conservative, since sprains and strains that result from repeated stress on the body (as opposed to a single injurious event) are often not treated in emergency rooms but by private physicians or clinics. Sprains and strains associated with lifting are frequently severe. Although an individual’s ability to safely lift objects varies, work for adolescents should not generally require them to lift objects weighing greater than 15 pounds more than once per minute or to lift objects weighing greater than 30 pounds; tasks involving continuous lifting should never last more than two hours.

The following types of work may involve hazardous manual lifting:

• Working in warehouses;
• Delivering furniture and appliances;
• Retrieving, carrying, or stocking shelves with relatively heavy items;
• Working in health care settings where patients are lifted and moved; and
• Installing or removing carpet or tile.

Other hazardous work

Federal child labor laws prohibit many particularly hazardous jobs. Particularly hazardous work that is not typically prohibited by Federal child labor laws includes work in petroleum and gas extraction, commercial fishing, many jobs that require use of respirators, work in sewage treatment plants or sewers, work on industrial conveyors, many uses of compressed air or pneumatic tools such as nail guns, and work around many types of machines with power take-offs or similarly rotating drivelines.

In addition to injuries, hazardous materials and working conditions are also a concern for adolescent workers. Exposures of adolescent workers to hazardous materials and working conditions may result in an immediate illness; however, illness might not be detected for months or years after exposure. Adolescent workers may be exposed to pesticides in farm work and lawn care, benzene at gasoline stations, lead in auto body repair, asbestos and silica in construction and maintenance work, and high levels of noise in manufacturing, construction, and agriculture. Concerns have also been raised that fatigue from balancing work and school may contribute to injuries among adolescent workers.