The 27 jobs that are most damaging to your health

Some jobs intrinsically have more health risks than others. A nurse working in a hospital is more likely to catch an infectious disease than a lawyer working in an office, for example.

To rank the most unhealthy jobs in America, we used data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), 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 the 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 higher score indicating an increased health risk.

Read on to find out which jobs have the most potential to damage your health.

Max Nisen contributed to an earlier version of this post.