Drug and alcohol overdoses at work killed 32 percent more Americans in 2016 than they did in 2015, new government statistics revealed on Tuesday.
Amid the opioid epidemic, 217 people died while at their jobs last year, a significant increase from the 165 accidental fatalities reported in 2015 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Those deaths, however, account for only a small fraction of the more than 64,000 lives claimed by drug overdoses in the past year.
According to the new statistics, the 2016 workplace death rate was the highest its been since 2010.
