PRINCIPLES OF OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY

Jeevan Rao
Chief Manager- Corporate Safety &
Environment
Siemens Ltd.

Occupational Safety is a discipline with a broad scope involving many specialized fields. In its
broadest sense, it aims at:

 Promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social well-
being of people in all occupations.
 Prevention of adverse effects on health of people caused by their working conditions.
 Protection of people in their employment from risks resulting from factors adverse to
health.
 Placement of people in an occupational environment based on physical and mental needs.
 Adaptation of work to humans, ergonomic factors etc.

Successful Occupational Safety practice requires the collaboration and participation people in
health and safety programmes, and involves the consideration of issues relating to occupational
medicine, industrial hygiene, toxicology, education, engineering safety, ergonomics, psychology,
etc.

Importance of Occupational Safety

There are three main factors for employees as well as the Organization involved in various kinds
of occupation. They are :

1. Economic Factors
2. Legal Requirements
3. Moral Issues

Economic Factors

 Compensation
 Medical treatment
 Abetment costs
 Equipment damage
 Statutory penalty
 Loss of Productivity

Legal Requirements

 Stringent and mandatory legal requirements in the areas of Occupational Safety.

 Litigations in the event of Safety legal non-compliance
  General liability in the event of Safety non-compliance

Moral Issues

 Increase in moral by having an effective Safety management system in place.

 Brand image which may get damaged due to poor Safety performance.

Poor working conditions affect employee Health & Safety

 Poor working conditions of any type have the potential to affect an employee’s health and
safety.
 Unhealthy or unsafe working conditions are not limited to factories — they can be found
anywhere, whether the workplace is indoors or outdoors.
 Poor working conditions can also affect the environment workers live in, since the
working and living environments are the same for many workers. This means that
occupational hazards can have harmful effects on workers, their families, and other
people in the community, as well as on the physical environment around the workplace. A
classic example is the use of pesticides in agricultural work. Workers can be exposed to
toxic chemicals in a number of ways when spraying pesticides: they can inhale the
chemicals during and after spraying, the chemicals can be absorbed through the skin, and
the workers can ingest the chemicals if they eat, drink, or smoke without first washing
their hands, or if drinking water has become contaminated with the chemicals. The
workers' families can also be exposed in a number of ways: they can inhale the pesticides
which may linger in the air, they can drink contaminated water, or they can be exposed to
residues which may be on the worker's clothes. Other people in the community can all be
exposed in the same ways as well. When the chemicals get absorbed into the soil or leach
into groundwater supplies, the adverse effects on the natural environment can be
permanent.

The effective ways of addressing the Occupational Safety issue is to recocognize and control the
hazards and have effective controls in place.

Common hazards at a typical workplace are

1. Physical hazards
2. Industrial Hygiene hazards

Example of Physical hazards is –

1. Electrical defects
2. Welding equipment
3. Ladder use
4. Vehicle use
Some examples of Industrial Hygiene are
1. Silica exposure
2. Chemical exposure
3. Noise exposure
4. Temperature, Pressure extremes

While deciding the Control methods for reducing the risks or while there are any changes made
to the existing controls, the following hierarchy of controls is generally considered:

1. Eliminating the hazard—physically removing it is the most effective hazard control. For
example, if employees must work at height, the hazard can be eliminated by moving the
piece they are working on to ground level to eliminate the need to work at heights.

2. Substitution- Substitution, is the second most effective hazard control, and involves
replacing something that produces a hazard (similar to elimination) with something that
does not produce a hazard for example, replacing lead based paint with water based
paint. To be an effective control, the new product must not produce another hazard.

3. Engineered controls - The third most effective means of controlling hazards is engineered
controls. These do not eliminate hazards, but rather isolate people from hazards. For
example, noise control by "Enclosure and isolation" creates a physical barrier between
personnel and hazards, such as using remotely controlled equipment.

4. Administrative controls- are changes to the way people work. Examples of administrative
controls include procedure changes, employee training, and installation of signs and
warning labels .Administrative controls do not remove hazards, but limit or prevent
people's exposure to the hazards, such as completing road construction at night when
fewer people are driving etc.

5. Personal protective equipment (PPE)

(PPE) includes gloves, respirators, helmets, safety glasses, high-visibility clothing, and
safety shoes. PPE is the least effective means of controlling hazards because of the high
potential for damage to render PPE ineffective. Additionally, some PPE, such as
respirators, increase physiological effort to complete a task and, therefore, may require
medical examinations to ensure workers can use the PPE without risking their health.

Identifying the cause of an accident

If these above mentioned controls fail then there is a potential to cause an injury or an accident.

In some cases, the cause of an industrial injury is easy to identify. However, very often there is a
hidden chain of events behind the accident which led up to the injury. For example, accidents are
often indirectly caused by negligence on the part of the employer who may not have provided
adequate employee training, or a supplier who gave the wrong information about a product, etc.
This calls for increased competency levels of all the people in the value chain and for having a
systematic occupational health and safety education programmes that focuses on prevention. It
is equally important to promote the development of occupational health services, including the
training of doctors to recognize work-related diseases in the early stages.

There is an unlimited number of hazards that can be found in almost any workplace. There are
obvious unsafe working conditions, such as unguarded machinery, slippery floors or inadequate
fire precautions, but there are also a number of categories of hazards (that is, those hazards that
are dangerous but which may not be obvious) including:

 chemical hazards, arising from liquids, solids, dusts, fumes, vapours and gases;
 physical hazards, such as noise, vibration, unsatisfactory lighting, radiation and extreme
temperatures;
 biological hazards, such as bacteria, viruses, infectious waste and infestations;
 psychological hazards resulting from stress and strain;
 hazards associated with the non-application of ergonomic principles, for example badly
designed machinery, mechanical devices and tools used by employees, improper seating
and workstation design, or poorly designed work practices.

Control of Accidents Causes

There are three main methods utilized to control accident causes: Engineering, Education &
training and Enforcement. These 3 methods are sometimes referred as the 3 E’s of Safety and
are outlined below.

The Three E’s of Safety

Engineering

Causes of accidents or unsafe conditions can sometimes be eliminated through the application of
engineering controls. When an operation is mechanically and physically safe, it is unnecessary to
be as concerned as one would about the uncertain behavior of people. Machines are less apt to
fail than people. It may be necessary to make mechanical revisions or modifications to eliminate
existing, unsafe conditions and, in some cases, to prevent unsafe acts. Design of machine guards,
automobile brakes, traffic signals, pressure relief valves and hand rails are varied examples of
safety engineering at work.
Education and Training

Just as safety engineering is the most effective way of preventing accidents involving mechanical
and physical conditions, safety education is the most effective tool in preventing accidents by
human causes. Through adequate instruction, personnel gain useful knowledge and development
of safe attitudes. Training is a particularly important accident prevention control; it gives each
employee a personal safety tool by developing habits of safe practice and operation.

Enforcement

Usually, accidents can be prevented through adequate safety engineering and education.
However, there are some people who are a hazard to themselves and others because of their
failure to comply with accepted safety standards. It is these persons for whom the strict
enforcement of safety practices is necessary, backed by prompt corrective action. No organized
accident prevention can be successful without effective enforcement because accidents are
frequently the direct result of violations of safety principles.

All engineering, education, training, supervision and enforcement measures will be directed
toward the solution of specific problems. These problems are identified based on the collection
of facts relating to unsafe acts or unsafe conditions.

 Obstacles and impediments to the safe movement of personnel, vehicles or machines,

such as blocked fire exits
 Unsafe working and walking surfaces
 Worn, damaged or misused tools
 Failure to provide proper equipment and rigging for the hoisting and movement of heavy
objects
 Operation of equipment with guards for moving parts of machinery removed and/or
defeated
 Allowing employees to work without using required personal protective equipment such
goggles, gloves, hardhats, adequate footwear or seatbelts
 Worn and/or damaged or unguarded electrical wiring, fixtures and power cords and
 Absence of required signage warning of particular hazards in the area

The important factor in eliminating unsafe conditions is doing so before an accident occurs. Near-
miss occurrences need to be investigated and corrected as they are a warning of a condition that
may eventually lead to an accident. A near-miss occurrence is an incident resulting in neither an
injury or property damage. However, a near-miss occurrence has the potential to inflict injury or
property damage if its cause is not corrected. Too often an unsafe condition is allowed to exist
simply because it has not caused an accident yet.
Reporting & correcting unsafe conditions & unsafe act

Unsafe conditions & acts should to be reported immediately

Regardless of the degree of safety built into a job, unsafe actions on the part of employees will
always be a cause of injuries. Teaching employees safe work habits means showing them how to
do their task with less risk to themselves and less damage to equipment. Much of this instruction
can be boiled down to a few simple principles or job rules. By concentrating on these safe habits,
by showing “why” as well as the “how” of safety and by constantly supervising employees’ safe
work habits, they will become the accepted method for the employee to perform tasks.

Actual demonstrations of the right ways of doing tasks should be conducted, accompanied by the
basis for preferring one work habit to another. Equally important as this initial instruction, is the
review of subsequent performance. When the right way has been presented and agreed to by the
individual worker, it is essential that failure to comply be corrected

Repeated disregard of safety rules should be met with appropriate disciplinary action. No matter
how skilful an employee may be in performing their duties, if the employee does not perform
them safely, that employee is playing themselves and others at risk.

Some of the Management Controls in order to improve the Safety performance are –

 CONTROL – Through commitment by all employees to comply with health & safety
responsibilities and objectives.

 CO-OPERATION – Through encouraging participation and involvement of employees in

planning, devising procedures, solving problems and reviewing performance. e.g.,
workplace self inspections, safety and health annual evaluation process, incident
investigation

 COMMUNICATION - Regular communication with employees on the subject of safety, risk,

and hazards – verbal, written, and promotional activities.

 COMPETENCE – of all employees through recruitment, training and support to make sure
that the right person is there for the right job and they make the maximum contribution to
health & safety

 Provide ways to report hazards, injuries and make recommendations to control hazards.
References –

ILO Publication - Fundamental Principles of Occupational Health & Safety by Benjamin O.Alli