Work-related injuries that occurred to people in Palmerston North City, New Zealand

Injury type: the primary injury/illness/disease diagnosis, as reported by the treatment provider.
Territorial authority: where the injury event took place.

Work-related injuries: Injuries covered by ACC as determined by the Accident Compensation Act 2001.

Section 26 of the Accident Compensation Act 2001 defines a 'personal injury', which includes: death, a physical injury or mental injury caused by a physical injury, mental injury caused by criminal act, damage to dentures or prostheses that replace a part of the human body.
Section 25 defines 'accident', which includes:
- a specific event, or a series of events, that involves the application of a force (including gravity) or resistance external to the human body, or involves the sudden movement of the body to avoid such a force or resistance external to the human body
- the inhalation or oral ingestion of any solid, liquid, gas, or foreign object on a specific occasion, which kind of occurrence does not include the inhalation or ingestion of a virus, bacterium, protozoa, or fungi unless that inhalation or ingestion is the result of the criminal act of a person other than the injured person
- a burn, or exposure to radiation or rays of any kind, on a specific occasion, which kind of occurrence does not include a burn or exposure caused by exposure to the elements
- the absorption of any chemical through the skin
- any exposure to the elements, or to extremes of temperature or environment.

The Act 2001 also covers work-related gradual process, disease, or infection.
Gradual process is defined as: 'Changes that result in personal injury and develop slowly and progressively over time, although not necessarily over a definable period', such as:
- effects of exposure to noise or fumes over a few months at a workplace
- physical deterioration resulting from an activity such as keyboarding where there are no specific events involving impact or strain
- progressive degenerative change due to the ageing process.
The second category covers occupational overuse syndromes, a range of conditions caused/contributed to by work factors resulting in localised inflammations, compression syndromes, and pain syndromes.

The Accident Compensation Act 2001, s28(1), defines a 'work-related personal injury' as an injury that happens when the worker is:
- at his or her place of employment
- including when the place moves (eg taxi)
- is a place to or through which the worker moves
- having a rest or meal break at work
- travelling to or from work in transport provided by the employer
- travelling from work in order to receive treatment for a work-related injury.

Random rounding and suppression: Counts under four have been suppressed for confidentiality. All figures in the tables are randomly rounded using the standard Stats NZ random rounding to base 3 method.

http://datainfoplus.stats.govt.nz/Item/nz.govt.stats/efab8226-45b2-4484-8da6-ef420fcf26bd

The data in this release is for claims for work-related injuries, and is not a definitive count of all work-related injuries. This is because not all work-related injuries result in a claim to ACC. As for fatal injuries, the statistics in this release are not a definitive count of work-related fatalities. Firstly, not all fatal work-related injuries are the subject of claims to ACC. Secondly, in this release fatal work-related injuries are counted in the year that the injury took place and are not included in the count of work-related fatalities for the year of death of the injured person.

This data includes claims made through accredited employers. Under the Accredited Employers Programme, employers agree to act on behalf of ACC for their employees' work-related claims in exchange for downward levy adjustments.
This data includes claims for accidents which occurred while overseas, at sea or on a plane.

• Non-work-related claims are excluded from this data.
• Claims without any costs recorded against them (any claims where the only treatment was provided at a hospital accident and emergency (A&E) department are not included).
• 'Not specified’ claims: A very small number of claims each year are classed as ‘not specified’ for sex, where these values were not recorded. These claims are not included in the total count of claims in the NZ.Stat tables, however they are included in the total count of claims in the Injury Statistics – work related claims 2020: final tables for 2019, provisional tables for 2020, and trend tables for 2002-20. Although this is a very small number of claims, it may create a discrepancy in some of the values presented between the NZ.Stat tables and the online published tables mentioned above.

At URL provided, select 'Customise' > 'Selection' > 'Year'. Select all except 2009, select totals for Age group and Sex, and then 'select all' for Type of injury, Severity of injury, Industry, and Territorial authority.

This dataset is based on information about claims for work-related injury made to the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC). ACC administers New Zealand’s accident compensation scheme, which provides injury insurance for all New Zealand citizens, residents, and temporary visitors to New Zealand.
A claim is made to ACC when treatment for an injury is first sought from any recognised treatment provider, such as a doctor or a physiotherapist.