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(OSH) is a cross-disciplinary area concerned with protecting the safety, health and welfare of people engaged in work or employment. As a secondary effect OSH may also protect employers, customers, suppliers, and members of the public who may experience an impact from the workplace environment. The primary, and in the view of many, the most prominent reason for establishing occupational safety and health (OSH) standards is moral - an employee should not have to expect that by coming to work life or limb is at risk, nor should others be adversely affected by their undertaking. OSH standards are, generally speaking, further reinforced in both civil law and criminal law; it is accepted that without the extra "encouragement" of potential regulatory action or litigation, many organisations would not act upon their implied moral obligations. A further factor that favours OSH is economic - many governments realize that poor occupational safety and health performance results in cost to the State (e.g. through social security payments to the incapacitated, costs for medical treatment, and the loss of the "employability" of the worker). Employing organisations also sustain costs in 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). In the European Union, Member States have enforcing authorities to ensure that the basic legal requirements relating to occupational safety and health are met. In many EU countries, there is strong cooperation between employer and worker organisations (e.g. Unions) to ensure good OSH performance as it is recognized this has benefits for both the worker ( throughmaintenance of health) and the enterprise (through improved productivity and quality). In 1996 the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (OSHA) was founded. In the UK, health and safety legislation is drawn up and enforced by the Health and Safety Executive under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Increasingly in the UK the regulatory trend is away from prescriptive rules, and towards risk assessment. Recent major changes to the laws governing asbestos and fire safety management embrace the concept of risk assessment. In the USA, OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, has been regulating occupational safety and health since the 1971. OSH regulation of a limited number of specifically defined industries was in place for several decades before that, and broad regulations by some of the individual states was in place for many years prior to the establishment of OSHA. In Canada, workers are covered by provincial or federal labour codes depending on the sector in which they work. Workers covered by federal legislation (including those in mining, transportation, and federal employment) are covered by the Canada Labour Code; all other workers are covered by the health and safety legislation of the province they work in. Occupational safety and health may involve interaction among several technical disciplines, including occupational medicine, occupational (or industrial) hygiene, safety engineering, health physics, ergonomics, toxicology, and psychology.
Hazards, risks, outcomes The terminology used in OSH varies between states, but generally speaking: For example, repetitively carrying out manual handling of heavy objects is a hazard (it can cause harm). The risk can either be expressed mathematically, (0.5 = a 50/50 chance) or just as "high/medium/low". The outcome would be a musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). Risk assessment Modern occupational safety and health legislation usually demands that a risk assessment be carried out prior to making an intervention. This assessment should: The calculation of risk is based on the likelihood or probability of the harm being realised 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 give a risk factor), or as a description of the circumstances by which the harm could arise i.e. qualitative. 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. The precautionary principle is a increasingly used method for reducing potential chemical or biological OSH risks. Common workplace hazard groups Prevention of fire often comes within the remit of health and safety professionals as well. Public Organizations Laws Fields Further reading OHSAS => (a part of) ISO 140001 | ||||||||
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