Occupational health and safety is a cross-disciplinary area concerned with protecting the safety, health and welfare of people engaged in work or employment. The goal of all occupational health and safety programs is to foster a safe work environment. As a secondary effect, it may also protect co-workers, family members, employers, customers, suppliers, nearby communities, and other members of the public who are impacted by the workplace environment. It may involve interactions among many subject areas, including occupational medicine, occupational (or industrial) hygiene, public health, safety engineering, chemistry, health physics.
Defenition
Since 1950, the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have shared a common definition of occupational health. It was adopted by the Joint ILO/WHO Committee on Occupational Health at its first session in 1950 and revised at its twelfth session in 1995. The definition reads: "Occupational health should aim at: the promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social well-being of workers in all occupations; the prevention amongst workers of departures from health caused by their working conditions; the protection of workers in their employment from risks resulting from factors adverse to health; the placing and maintenance of the worker in an occupational environment adapted to his physiological and psychological capabilities; and, to summarize, the adaptation of work to man and of each man to his job". This standard is based on the methodology known as Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA)
Relationship to occupational health psychology
Occupational health psychology (OHP), a related discipline, is a relatively new field that combines elements of occupational health and safety, industrial/organizational psychology, and health psychology.[2] The field is concerned with identifying work-related psychosocial factors that adversely affect the health of people who work. OHP is also concerned with developing ways to effect change in workplaces for the purpose of improving the health of people who work. For more detail on OHP, see the section on occupational health psychology
Reasons for occupational health and safety
The event of an incident at work (such as legal fees, fines, compensatory damages, investigation time, lost production, lost goodwill from the workforce, from customers and from the wider community).
Legal - Occupational requirements may be reinforced in civil law and/or criminal law; it is accepted that without the extra "encouragement" of potential regulatory action or litigation, many organizations would not act upon their implied moral obligations.
Occupational health and safety officers promote health and safety procedures in an organisation. They recognize hazards and measure health and safety risks, set suitable safety controls in place, and give recommendations on avoiding accidents to management and employees in an organisation. This paper looks at the main tasks undertaken by OHS practitioners in Europe, Australia and the USA, and the main knowledge and skills that are required of them. “Like it or not, organisations have a duty to provide health and safety training. But it could involve much more than you think.” (Damon, Nadia. 2008. ‘Reducing The Risks’, Training and Coaching Today, United Kingdom, pg.14)
An effective training program can reduce the number of injuries and deaths, property damage, legal liability, illnesses, workers' compensation claims, and missed time from work. A safety training program can also help a trainer keep the required OSHA-mandated safety training courses organized and up-to-date.
Safety training classes help establish a safety culture in which employees themselves help promote proper safety procedures while on the job. It is important that new employees be properly trained and embrace the importance of workplace safety as it is easy for seasoned workers to negatively influence the new hires. That negative influence however, can be purged with the establishment of new, hands-on, innovative effective safety training which will ultimately lead to an effective safety culture. A 1998 NIOSH study concluded that the role of training in developing and maintaining effective hazard control activities is a proven and successful method of intervention
Identifing Safety and Health Hazard
Hazards, risks, outcomes
The terminology used in OSH varies between states, but generally speaking:
- A hazard is something that can cause harm if not controlled.
- The outcome is the harm that results from an uncontrolled hazard.
- A risk is a combination of the probability that a particular outcome will occur and the severity of the harm involved.
“Hazard”, “risk”, and “outcome” are used in other fields to describe e.g. environmental damage, or damage to equipment. However, in the context of OSH, “harm” generally describes the direct or indirect degradation, temporary or permanent, of the physical, mental, or social well-being of workers. For example, repetitively carrying out manual handling of heavy objects is a hazard. The outcome could be a musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) or an acute back or joint injury. The risk can be expressed numerically (e.g. a 0.5 or 50/50 chance of the outcome occurring during a year), in relative terms (e.g. "high/medium/low"), or with a multi-dimensional classification scheme (e.g. situation-specific risks).
Hazard Assessment
Hazard analysis or hazard assessment is a process in which individual hazards of the workplace are identified, assessed and controlled/eliminated as close to source (location of the hazard) as reasonable and possible. As technology, resources, social expectation or regulatory requirements change, hazard analysis focuses controls more closely toward the source of the hazard. Thus hazard control is a dynamic program of prevention. Hazard-based programs also have the advantage of not assigning or impling there are "acceptable risks" in the workplace. A hazard-based program may not be able to eliminate all risks, but neither does it accept "satisfactory" -- but still risky—outcomes. And as those who calculate and manage the risk are usually managers while those exposed to the risks are a different group, workers, a hazard-based approach can by-pass conflict inherent in a risk-based approach.
Risk Assessment
Modern occupational safety and health legislation usually demands that a risk assessment be carried out prior to making an intervention. It should be kept in mind that risk management requires risk to be managed to a level which is as low as is reasonably practical.
This assessment should:
- Identify the hazards
- Identify all affected by the hazard and how
- Evaluate the risk
- Identify and prioritize appropriate control measures
The calculation of risk is based on the likelihood or probability of the harm being realized and the severity of the consequences. This can be expressed mathematically as a quantitative assessment (by assigning low, medium and high likelihood and severity with integers and multiplying them to obtain a risk factor, or qualitatively as a description of the circumstances by which the harm could arise.
The assessment should be recorded and reviewed periodically and whenever there is a significant change to work practices. The assessment should include practical recommendations to control the risk. Once recommended controls are implemented, the risk should be re-calculated to determine of it has been lowered to an acceptable level. Generally speaking, newly introduced controls should lower risk by one level, i.e., from high to medium or from medium to low.
Common Workplace Hazard Groups
- Mechanical hazards include:
By type of agent:
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- Other physical hazards:
- Noise
- Vibration
- Lighting
- Barotrauma (hypobaric/hyperbaric pressure)
- Ionizing radiation
- Electricity
- Asphyxiation
- Cold stress (hypothermia)
- Heat stress (hyperthermia)
- Dehydration (due to sweating)
- Chemical hazards include:
- Acids
- Bases
- Heavy metals
- Solvents
- Particulates
- Fumes (noxious gases/vapors)
- Highly-reactive chemicals
- Fire, conflagration and explosion hazards:
- Psychosocial issues include:
- Work-related stress, whose causal factors include excessive working time and overwork
- Violence from outside the organisation
- Bullying, which may include emotional and verbal abuse
- Sexual harassment
- Mobbing
- Burnout
- Exposure to unhealthy elements during meetings with business associates, e.g. tobacco, uncontrolled alcohol
- Musculoskeletal disorders, avoided by the employment of good ergonomic design
· Fire prevention (fire protection/fire safety) often comes within the remit of health and safety professionals as well
References
- ^ Oak Ridge National Lab Safety Document http://www.ornl.gov
- ^ Everly, G. S., Jr. (1986). An introduction to occupational health psychology. P. A. Keller & L. G. Ritt (Eds.), Innovations in clinical practice: A source book, Vol. 5 (pp. 331-338). Sarasota, FL: Professional Resource Exchange.
- ^ OSHA Outreach Resources
- ^ Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
- ^ About NIOSH. National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.
- ^ "Occupational Disease Control Act of the People's Republic of China" http://www.gov.cn/banshi/2005-08/01/content_19003.htm
- ^ "The Work Safety Act of the People's Republic of China" http://www.gov.cn/ztzl/2006-05/27/content_292725.htm
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