10.1177/0145445504273287 BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION / May 2005 Geller / SAFETY AND RISK MANAGEMENT Behavior-Based Safety and Occupational Risk Management E. SCOTT GELLER Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University The behavior-based approach to managing occupational risk and preventing workplace injuries is reviewed. Unlike the typical top-down control approachto industrial safety, behavior-based safety (BBS) provides tools and procedures workers can use to take personal control of occupa- tional risks. Strategies the author and his colleagues have been using for more than a decade to teach BBS to safety leaders and line workers are presented. In addition, a conceptual model is proposed for matching the awareness and behavior of an individual with a particular BBS inter- vention technique. Keywords: risk management; behavioral safety; injury prevention; organizational behavior management; applied behavior analysis Unintentional injury is the leading cause of death to U.S. residents aged 44 and younger (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1998), and many of these fatalities occur in the workplace. Every year, an esti- mated 7,000 to 11,000 U.S. employees are killed at work and 2.5 to 11.3 million are seriously injured (Miller, 1997). This results in 250,000 potential productive years of life lost annually—more than from cancer and cardiovascular disease combined (Leigh, 1995). The overall financial liability of work-related injuries in the United States was estimated at $116 billion in 1992, an increase from the 1989 esti- mate of $89 billion and dramatically larger than the 1985 estimate of $34.6 billion (Leigh, 1995). Direct costs include lost wages, medical expenses, insurance claims, production delays, lost time of cowork- ers, equipment damage, and fire losses (Miller, 1997). 539 BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION, Vol. 29 No. 3, May 2005 539-561 DOI: 10.1177/0145445504273287 © 2005 Sage Publications