ORLANDO, Fla. – While the national rate of a worker’s chance of death while on the job has declined for this year, new studies show that Florida’s occupational death rate, however, is rising, making Florida’s workplaces less safe in the recent years.

In the last two years, workers at various places such as Universal Studios in Central Florida, a mushroom plant, and a construction site of the Interstate 4 have died due to work-related accidents. Some of the deaths were in high-risk places while the others were in areas with fairly ordinary tasks.

For the recent annual reporting, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national worker fatality rate has dropped to 3.38 from its 3.43 rate the other year. However, Florida’s occupational death rate for 1000 workers has increased 0.4 from 2.7, making it at 3.1 now.

Compared to the nation as a whole, Florida has a much larger increase in the occupational death toll in 2015. Florida’s occupational death rate has increased by 44 during the 2015 year-end period. It reached a total of 272 while the worker deaths for the entire US has only increased by 36.

The renovation of the Interstate 4 was considered the largest construction project in the region and it claimed a worker’s life last year because of the lack of certain standard safeguards, according to OSHA. Bruce Stevenson Sr, A Eustis resident who has lost his son at the Monterey Mushroom Inc. plant accident in Apopka, said that families might not fully appreciate the importance of safety in the workplace until it hits close to home.

Inspection by the OSHA determined that this accident adding to Florida’s occupational death rate increase could have been prevented with a spotter in place, traffic programs for the pedestrians, and an adherence to the manuals restricting the people from danger zones.

However, companies are not always the ones to blame for workplace accidents and deaths. There is one case where the federal inspectors determined that there is nothing that the equipment company could have done to avoid a fatal accident at the auction yard last year in Central Florida.

On the other hand, there is also an ongoing case of the OSHA investigating the electrocution of Leopoldo Buenaventura, a Universal Orlando ride technician, last November 8. He was doing some troubleshooting on the animatronics equipment and fell into it. According to the OSHA report, he died on-site.

The spokesperson of the park, Tom Schroder, said that they take these work safety issues seriously and are working closely with the OSHA to review their protocols and safety measures for constant improvement.