Postal employee Vincent Baxter moves packages at the Indianapolis Mail Processing Annex in 2014. The Postal Service is fifth on a list of 25 industry groups reporting sever injuries in 2015. (Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

Next time you order sliced turkey or ham at a supermarket or restaurant, make sure you also don’t get the butcher’s fingertip.

Shortly after a federal rule requiring employers to report severe work related injuries, Labor Department staffers in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Atlanta office noticed a disturbing and surprising trend – “numerous reports of fingertip amputations among workers using food slicers.”

That’s one finding in an OSHA document released Thursday about the 10,388 severe work-related injuries reported in 2015, the first full year of a federal reporting requirement. Injuries resulting in eye loss, amputation or hospitalization must be reported within 24 hours.  Included were 2,644 amputations and 7,636 hospitalizations. Employers were already required to report fatalities within eight hours.

Until the severe injury reporting requirement, OSHA officials didn’t have a full grasp of the situation. “Too often, we would investigate a fatal injury only to find a history of serious injuries at the same workplace,” the report says. “Each of those injuries was a wake-up call for safety that went unheeded.”

Even with the new requirement, officials still don’t have a complete accounting of severe injuries. OSHA knows the reported number is an under-count.

“We think the actual number might be twice as high,” Assistant Secretary of Labor David Michaels said by telephone.

Here is some of what OSHA said the reporting requirement revealed:

• A woman’s arm was badly mangled in Chicago when “a conveyor loaded with liquid chocolate suddenly started up as a worker was cleaning a roller.”
• A sanitation worker in a Missouri meat processing plant lost both lower arms when cleaning a mechanized blender that abruptly began operating.
• A truck driver loading creamer in Idaho lost a fingertip when a valve cover snapped shut on his hand.
• A worker’s arm was amputated after he tried to clear a conveyor jam in an Idaho sawmill.

While these examples are from the private sector, the U.S. Postal Service also ranks high on the list, number five out of 25, of industry groups reporting severe injuries.

That reporting, however, is largely self-reporting.

There are simply too few inspectors for the number of workplaces for every job to get a personal touch from a government official. Michaels said the agency uses 2,500 inspectors, including those with state agencies partnering with federal officials, but there are 7 million to 8 million workplaces.