The 17 jobs that are least damaging to your health

No job is completely safe or healthy. Even seemingly harmless desk jobs are killing us, thanks to the stressful environment and sedentary nature of many modern-day office gigs.

But some jobs intrinsically pose much greater health risks than others.

Working as a chemical plant operator or nurse, for instance, is far more dangerous and less healthy than working as a college professor or music director.

To rank the least unhealthy jobs in America, we used data from the Occupational Information Network, a US Department of Labor database full of detailed information on occupations.

In order to analyze jobs by their impact on workers' health, we took O*NET measures of six health risks in each of the 974 occupations in its database: exposure to contaminants; exposure to disease and infection; exposure to hazardous conditions; exposure to radiation; risk of minor burns, cuts, bites, and stings; and time spent sitting, since studies show that frequent inactivity shortens your lifespan. O*NET scores these factors on a scale from 0 to 100, with a lower score indicating a smaller health risk.

Read on to find out which jobs have very little potential to damage your health: