The Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has for several years tracked lost work day injury and illness (LWDII) rates at about 80,000 worksites in selected high-hazard industries across the country. OSHA kept secret its LWDII database, claiming that the data are confidential. Reporter David Barstow of the New York Times, seeking the names and rates of the most injury- and illness-prone worksites, requested the data under the Freedom of Information Act in October 2002. His request was rejected, and when his appeal was also turned down, he sued for the release of the data in mid-2003.
As a preemptive move, in February 2004 OSHA released a list of the workplaces with the highest rates, but the list didn't contain the rates themselves. That list can be found on The Memory Hole here.
In August 2004, a federal judge ruled that OSHA had to release the names and rates. Eventually the agency did so. (Some background on the case is found in court papers here.)
The complete data - for the years 1996 through 2002 - were obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request and are presented at [The Memory Hole].
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