1 College of the Environment and Ecology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian 361102, China.
2 École Polytechnique de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3A7, Canada.
3 Independent Researcher, Washington, District of Columbia 20008, United States.
4 John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, Montréal, Quebec H3G 2J1, Canada.
5 School of Public Health, University of Texas Health Science Center, Austin, Texas 77030, United States.
6 Eastern Research Group, Concord, Massachusetts 01742, United States.
7 Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, Department of Environmental and Resource Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby 2800, Denmark.
8 Department of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, United States.

Occupational injuries and illnesses are major risk factors for human health impacts worldwide, but they have not been consistently nor comprehensively considered in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods. In this study, we quantified occupational health impacts as disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for nonfatal injuries and illnesses in all US industries. We further applied an economic input-output model of the US economy to develop a new data set of characterization factors (CFs) that links direct and indirect occupational health impacts to product life cycle final demand. We found that the CF data set varies significantly by industry, ranging from 6.1 to 298 DALYs per billion dollars. About 20% of final demand in the US economic system contributes nearly 50% of the total impacts of occupational health, suggesting occupational health impacts are concentrated in a small portion of industries. To verify the feasibility of the CFs and demonstrate their importance, we included a case of an office chair. The occupational health impacts caused by nonfatal injuries and illnesses during the production of an office chair are of the same order of magnitude as those caused by chemical emissions across the chair's life cycle, with 1.1 × 10^-5 and 1.4 × 10^-5 DALYs per chair, respectively. Results and data sets derived from this study support the integration of occupational health impacts with LCIA methods.