This Common Job Is Stunningly Dangerous

You may already know that a garbage man (very few women still opt for this job) is dirty work that won't get you rich. (The average salary is $27,000 a year.)

But what most people don't know is that it's also incredibly dangerous work. Sanitation workers experience twice the fatality rates of police officers (who earn nearly twice as much) and nearly seven times the rate of firefighters, according to a just published, and first of its kind, cultural study, Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City.