Health and Safety at

Workplace
Ch.E-104
 Course Contents
Health and safety foundations,
Nature and scope of health and safety,
Reasons/benefits and barriers for good practices of health and safety,
Legal framework and OHS management system
Fostering a safety culture,
Four principles of safety-RAMP,
Rethinking safety learnings from incidents,
Safety ethics and rules 1.3.2,
Roles and responsibilities towards safety,
Course Contents
Building positive attitude towards safety,
Safety culture in academic institutions
Recognizing and communicating hazards ,
Hazards and Risk,
Types of hazards: physical (mechanical and non-mechanical), chemical (toxic
and biological agents),
Ergonomics, Electrical and Fire.
Learning the language of safety: signs, symbols and labels
Finding hazard information, material safety data sheets, safety datasheets and
GHS
Course Contents
 Assessing and minimizing the risk from hazards,
 (Risk concept and terminologies, risk assessment procedures, risk metric’s, Risk
estimation and acceptability criteria, principles of risk prevention, selection and
implementation of appropriate risk controls, hierarchy of controls
 Preparing for emergency response, fire,
 Chemical spill, first aid
 Chemical management, inspections
 Storage, wastes and security
 Incident investigation, recording and reporting, monitoring
 Review and auditing health and safety
Recommended
Books
Recommended
Books
Class Learning Outcomes
 Health and safety
foundations
Occupational health and safety (OHS) is relevant to all branches of
industry,
business and commerce including traditional industries,
information technology companies,
hospitals,
care homes,
schools, universities,
leisure facilities and offices.
Occupational health and safety affects all aspects of
work.
 In a low hazard organization, health and safety may
be supervised by a single competent manager.
In a high hazard manufacturing plant, many
different specialists, such as engineers (chemical,
electrical, mechanical and civil), lawyers, medical
doctors and nurses, trainers, work planners and
supervisors, may be required to assist the
professional health and safety expert in ensuring that
there are satisfactory health and safety standards
within the organization .
Challenges
There are many complications to the achievement of
good standards.
The pressure of production or performance targets,
financial constraints and the complexity of the
organization are typical examples of such obstacles.
However, there are some powerful incentives for
organizations to strive for high health and safety
standards.
These incentives are moral, legal and economic.
Corporate responsibility
It is a term used extensively in the twenty-first century
world of work, covers a wide range of issues.
It includes the effects that an organization’s business has on
the environment, human rights and third world poverty.
Health and safety in the workplace is an important
corporate responsibility issue.
Corporate responsibility has various definitions.
However, broadly speaking, it covers the ways in
which organizations manage their core business to
add social, environmental and economic value in
order to produce a positive, sustainable impact on
both society and the business itself.
Terms, such as ‘corporate social responsibility’,
‘socially responsible business’ and ‘corporate
citizenship’, all refer to this concept.
Mission of Health and Safety
Executive (HSE)
The mission of the Health and Safety Executive
(HSE) is to ensure that the risks to health and safety of workers are
properly controlled. In terms of corporate responsibility, it is working to
encourage organizations to:
improve health and safety management systems to
reduce injuries and ill-health;
demonstrate the importance of health and safety
issues at broad level;
report publicly on health and safety issues within
their organization, including their performance
against targets.
Purpose of the Effective
Management of Health and Safety
 is vital to employee well-being;
 has a role to play in enhancing the reputation of
businesses and helping them achieve high-performance
teams;
is financially beneficial to business.
The International Labor Organisation (ILO), the World Health
Organisation (WHO), and United Nations (UN) have estimated that
there are 270 million occupational
accidents and 160 million occupational diseases every
year throughout the world – and these are recognized
as relatively conservative estimates due to probable
under-reporting. The ILO estimates that 2 million people die each year
as a result of occupational accidents and work-related diseases
Continue…
In the USA in 2002, approximately 2 million workers
were victims of workplace violence. In the UK, 1.7% of
working adults (357000 workers) were the victims of one or more
incidents of workplace violence.
Ten per cent of all skin cancers are estimated to be
attributable to workplace exposure to hazardous substances. Thirty
seven per cent of miners in Latin America have silicosis, rising to 50%
among miners over 50 years of age. In India 54.6% of slate pencil
workers and 36.2% of stone cutters have silicosis.
Silicosis
Silicosis is a type of pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease caused by
breathing in tiny bits of silica, a common mineral found in sand, quartz
and many other types of rock. Silicosis mainly affects workers exposed
to silica dust in jobs such as construction and mining.
In the course of the twentieth century, industrialized countries saw a
clear decrease in serious injuries, not least because of real advances in
making the workplace healthier and safer.
The challenge is to extend the benefits of this experience to the whole
working world. However, 1984 saw the worst chemical disaster ever
when 2500 people were killed, and over 200000 injured, in the space of
a few hours at Bhopal.
This affected not only the workers, but also their families, their
neighbors and whole communities. More than 20 years later many
people are still affected by the disaster and are dying as a result.
Some Basic Definitions
Before a detailed discussion of health and safety issues can take place,
some basic occupational health and safety definitions are required.
Health – The protection of the bodies and minds of people from illness
resulting from the materials, processes or procedures used in the
workplace.
Safety – The protection of people from physical injury. The borderline
between health and safety is ill-defined and the two words are normally
used together to indicate concern for the physical and mental well-
being of the individual at the place of work.
Welfare
The provision of facilities to maintain the health and well-being of
individuals at the workplace.
Welfare facilities include washing and sanitation arrangements, the
provision of drinking water, heating, lighting, accommodation for
clothing, seating (when required by the work activity or for rest), eating
and rest rooms.
First aid arrangements are also considered as welfare facilities.
Occupational or work-
related ill-health
This is concerned with those illnesses or physical and mental disorders
that are either caused or triggered by workplace activities.
Such conditions may be induced by the particular work activity of the
individual or by activities of others in the workplace.
They may be either physiological or psychological or a combination of
both.
The time interval between exposure and the onset of the illness may
be short (e.g. asthma attacks) or long (e.g. deafness or cancer).
Environmental protection
These are the arrangements to cover those activities in the workplace
which affect the environment (in the form of water, air and soil) and,
possibly, the health and safety of employees and others.
Such activities include waste and effluent disposal and atmospheric
pollution.
Accident
This is defined as any unplanned event that results in injury or ill
health of people, or damage or loss to property, plant, materials or the
environment or a loss of a business opportunity’.
Other authorities define an accident more narrowly by excluding
events that do not involve injury or ill-health.
It is important to note that work-related accidents may not always
occur at the place of work.
Commuting accidents occur during work-related travel (usually by
road).
Near miss
This is any incident that could have resulted in an accident.
Knowledge of near misses is very important as research has shown
that, approximately, for every 10 ‘near miss’ events at a particular
location in the workplace, a minor accident will occur.
Dangerous occurrence
This is a ‘near miss’ which could have led to serious injury or loss of
life.
Specified dangerous occurrences are always reportable to the
enforcement authorities.
Examples include the collapse of a scaffold or
a crane or the failure of any passenger-carrying equipment
Hazard and risk
A hazard is the potential of a substance, person, activity or process to
cause harm.
Hazards take many forms including, for example, chemicals, electricity
and working from a ladder.
A hazard can be ranked relative to other hazards or to a possible level
of danger.
A risk is the likelihood of a substance, activity or process to cause harm
and its resulting severity.
A risk can be reduced, and the hazard can be eliminated or controlled
by good management.
Difference between hazard
and risk
It is very important to distinguish between a hazard
and a risk – the two terms are often confused and activities such as
construction work are frequently called high
risk when they are high hazard.
Although the hazard will continue to be high, the risks will be reduced
as controls are implemented.
The level of risk remaining when controls have been adopted is known
as the residual risk.
There should only be high residual risk where there
is poor health and safety management and inadequate
control measures.