NEWPORT NEWS, VA. — Building ships long has ranked as one of the more dangerous industrial jobs.
There's just something about cutting and bending steel, welding thousands of parts, hooking up electrical systems, crawling through tight spaces and working on small platforms hundreds of feet in the air that carries risk.
The job is still hazardous, but it's getting safer. Over the last 14 years, the shipbuilding and ship repair industry has seen its rate of recordable injuries and illnesses — cases that require medical care beyond first aid — fall sharply.