Welcome to the World Steel Association’s 2025 safety and health in the steel industry data report. This report is based on data provided by our members and offers crucial insights into our industry’s ongoing commitment to safety and the well-being of our workforce.

In 2024, worldsteel’s members reported 67 fatalities globally, representing a global fatal frequency rate (FFR) of 0.016, the lowest on record. Additionally, our global lost time injury frequency rate (LTIFR) is at 0.70, which is also the lowest on record.

The steel industry is clearly making improvements in safety and health through learning exchanges and technology use. We are committed to achieving the goal of zero harm for employees and contractors.

Although lagging metrics are important, worldsteel consistently advises against using only these metrics as benchmarks. To support this, worldsteel endorses the adoption of evolving approaches in safety and health management used by our leading members. One of our challenges this year will be to revisit our metrics, focusing on the prevention of high-potential incidents and illness.

Our emphasis remains on process safety management (PSM) while addressing contractor vulnerabilities and fall from height incidents, the leading cause of fatalities in recent years.

Promoting holistic wellbeing in the global steel industry is crucial. We must continue striving for excellence in safety and health to ensure a safer, healthier future for everyone.

worldsteel’s position on lagging indicators

The most popular lagging indicators, such as LTIFR or total recordable injury frequency rate (TRIFR), will be kept within the worldsteel reporting framework and as a reference of the industry’s general performance.

However, comparisons between organisations or local sites should not be made using LTIFR or TRIFR.

Below are the main reasons:

• These indicators correlate poorly with the severity of accidents and injuries and do not provide a valid or reliable measure of safety and health controls and initiatives.
• A smaller organisation’s LTIFR or TRIFR is more significantly affected by a single incident but this doesn’t necessarily indicate a more dangerous working environment.
• Although worldsteel has a definition for lost time injury (LTI) and total recordable injury (TRI), companies vary in their definition of what constitutes an LTI and TRI.

These two indicators should not be part of individual, team or organisation objectives, bonuses, or incentives as they can foster a negative attitude towards reporting, limiting the organisational ability to learn and improve.

A serious injury is a permanent impairment or life-altering state, or an injury that, if not immediately addressed, will lead to death or permanent or long-term impairment.

A potential serious injury or fatality is a near miss incident that could have resulted in a serious injury or fatality (PSIF) if not for specific barriers or countermeasures or if one factor around the event had been changed.

A precursor of PSIF is a high-risk situation in which control methods are absent, ineffective, or not complied with, and if allowed to continue, would potentially result in a fatality or serious injury.

The number of individual sites reporting to worldsteel using of the PSIF framework has increased in recent years. The figures below only represent the sites reporting PSIFs and combining contractors and employees.

Total recordable incidents comprise fatalities, LTIs, RWCs and MTIs. In the data survey, restricted work cases and MTIs are reported separately. Working hours are counted only on-sites that have reported at least one RWC or MTI.

Death from a work-related injury, certified by a medical professional. The fatality frequency rate (FFR) is calculated as the number of fatalities per million hours worked.

* Data received from China via Sinosteel Wuhan Safety & Environmental Protection Research Institute (SEPRI) does not distinguish between employees and contractors. Data received directly from Chinese worldsteel members does and is included in the analysis.

Figure 11: Causes of fatalities 2015-2024

Process safety management (PSM) is a blend of operational, engineering and management skills focused on preventing catastrophic accidents and near misses, particularly explosions, fires, structural collapse, and damaging releases associated with a loss of containment of energy or dangerous substances such as molten metals, fuels, and chemicals.