Roles and Professional Certifications for Safety and Health Professionals

1
Chapter 4

• Roles and Professional Certifications for Safety
  and Health Professionals

2
Major Topics

• Safety and Health Manager
• Engineers and Safety
• Occupational Physician
• Occupational Health Nurse
• Risk Manager
• Safety Certifications

3
Positions in Safety and Health Team

• Safety and Health Manager is the most important
  member leader of the safety and health team.
• Others are
• Safety engineer
• Environmental engineer
• Industrial hygienist
• Health physicist
• Occupational health nurse
• Occupational physician

4
Impact of workers compensation and environment
on commitment of corporate management to safety
and health

• OSHA standards, onsite inspections, and penalties
  have encouraged a greater commitment to safety
  and health.
• Environmental, liability, and workers
  compensation issues have also had an impact, as
  has the growing awareness that providing a safe
  and healthy workplace is the right thing to do
  from both an ethical and a business perspective.

5
Difference between staff and line position

• Line authority means that the safety and health
  manager has authority over and supervises certain
  employees other safety and health personnel.
• Staff authority means that the safety and health
  manager is the staff person responsible for a
  certain function, but he or she has no line
  authority over others involved with that function.

6
Problems in attempting to implement programs

• Lack of commitment Safety and health
  professional should be prepared to confront a
  less than wholehearted commitment from top
  management in some companies.
• Production versus safety At times, a safety or
  health measure will be viewed by some as
  interfering with productivity.

7
Succeed in todays competitive global marketplace

• Competitiveness comes from continually improving
  a companys productivity, quality, cost, image,
  service, and response time.
• These continual improvements can be achieved and
  maintained best in a safe and healthy work
  environment.

8
Use competitiveness to gain commitment to safety
and health

• The way to gain company wide commitment to safety
  and health is to convey the message that a safe
  and healthy workplace is the best way to improve
  productivity, cost, quality, image, service, and
  response time.
• The way not to gain a company wide commitment to
  safety and health is to quote government
  regulations as a reason.

9
College majors that can lead to a careers as a
safety and health manager

• Universities, colleges, and community colleges
  across the country have responded to the need for
  formal education for safety and health managers
  as well as other safety and health personnel.
• Associate degrees are available in industrial
  safety, occupational safety, environmental
  technology, safety and health management, and
  industrial hygiene.
• Baccalaureate degrees are available in
  industrial safety and health, occupational safety
  management and industrial hygiene.

10
Ongoing in-service training for safety and health
managers

• In-service training, ongoing interaction with
  professional colleagues, and continued reading of
  professional literature are effective ways to
  stay current.
• New safety and health managers should join the
  appropriate professional organizations, become
  familiar with related government agencies, and
  establish links with relevant standards
  organizations.

11
Safety and health certifications

• Professional certification is an excellent way to
  establish ones stature in the field of safety
  and health.
• To qualify to take a certification exam, safety
  and health managers must have the required
  education and experience and submit letters of
  recommendation as specified by the certification
  boards fig 4-4, page 58 Board of Certified
  Safety Professionals of America, American Board
  of Industrial Hygiene, Board of Certification in
  Professional Engineering, and The Institute of
  Industrial Engineers.

12
Professional Societies

• Professional societies are typically formed for
  the purpose of promoting professionalism, adding
  to the body of knowledge, and forming networks
  among colleagues in a given field fig 4-5, page
  58 American Academy of Industrial Hygiene,
  American Industrial Hygiene Association, American
  Occupational Medical Association, American
  Society of Safety Engineers, National Safety
  Council, and Society of Toxicology.

13
An engineer who errs may harm hundreds

• Engineers can make a significant contribution to
  safety.
• Correspondingly, they can cause, inadvertently or
  through incompetence, accidents that result in
  serious injury and property damage.
• The engineer has more potential to affect safety
  in the workplace than any other person does.
• With a poorly designed seatbelt installed in
  10,000 automobiles, the engineer has
  inadvertently endangered the lives of as many as
  40,000 people (estimating four passengers per
  automobile).

14
How the design process can affect safety

• The engineers opportunity for both good and bad
  comes during the design process.
• The process is basically the same regardless of
  whether the product is being designed in a small
  toy or an industrial machine.
• Safety and health professionals should be
  familiar with the design process so that they can
  understand the role of engineers concerning
  workplace safety.

15
Engineers most likely to work as design engineers

• Engineers involved in design are usually in the
  aerospace, electrical, mechanical, and nuclear
  fields.

16
Safety engineer

• The title safety engineer is sometimes a misnomer
  because it implies that the person is a degreed
  engineer. This may not be the case, as typically
  the title is given to the person who has overall
  responsibility for the companys safety program.
• This person is responsible for the traditional
  aspects of the safety program such as preventing
  mechanical injuries falls, impact and
  acceleration injuries heat and temperature
  injuries electrical accidents fire related
  accidents and so on.

17
Industrial engineers as safety engineers

• Industrial engineers are most likely to work as
  safety engineers.
• Their knowledge of industrial systems can make
  them valuable members of a design team,
  particularly one that designs industrial systems
  and technologies.
• They can also contribute to the companys safety
  team by helping design job and plant layouts for
  both efficiency and safety.

18
Environmental engineers and safety

• Environmental engineering science is a relatively
  new field in which the application of scientific
  and engineering principles is used to protect and
  preserve human health and well being of the
  environment.
• It embraces the broad field of the general
  environment including air and water quality,
  solid and hazardous wastes, water resources and
  management, radiological health, environmental
  biology and chemistry, systems ecology, and water
  and waste water treatment.

19
Chemical engineers and safety

• Increasingly, industrial companies are seeking
  chemical engineers to fill the industrial hygiene
  role on the safety and health team.
• Modern chemical engineers, who are also called
  process engineers, are concerned with all the
  physical and chemical changes of matter to
  produce a product economically or result that is
  useful to mankind.
• Such a broad background has made the chemical
  engineer extremely versatile and capable of
  working in a wide variety of industries.

20
Industrial Hygienist

• American Industrial Hygiene Association
  Industrial hygiene is the science and art devoted
  to the recognition, evaluation, and control of
  those environmental factors or stresses, arising
  in and from the workplace, which may cause
  sickness, impaired health and well being, or
  significant discomfort and inefficiency among
  workers or among citizens of the community.
• National Safety Council An industrial hygienist
  has the abilities to recognize the environmental
  factors and to understand their effect on humans
  and their well being to evaluate on the basis of
  their experience and with the aid of quantitative
  measurement techniques, the magnitude of these
  stresses in terms of ability to impair human
  health and well being and to prescribe methods
  to eliminate, control, or reduce such stresses
  when necessary to alleviate their effects.

21
Health Physicist

• Health physicists are concerned primarily with
  radiation in the workplace.
• Consequently they are employed by companies that
  generate or use nuclear power.
• Their primary duties include the following
  monitoring radiation inside and outside the
  facility, measuring the radioactivity levels of
  biological samples, developing the radiation
  components of the emergency action plan, and
  supervising the decontamination of workers and
  the workplace when necessary.

22
Job of Occupational Physician

• Appraisal, maintenance, restoration, and
  improvement of the workers health through
  application of the principles of preventive
  medicine, emergency medical care, rehabilitation,
  and environmental medicine.
• Promotion of a productive and fulfilling
  interaction of the worker and the job, via
  applications of principles of human behavior.
• Active appreciation of the social, economic, and
  administrative needs and responsibilities of both
  the worker and work community.
• Team approach to safety and health, involving
  cooperation of the physician with occupational or
  industrial hygienists, occupational health
  nurses, safety personnel, and other specialties.

23
Job of Occupational Health Nurse

• Occupational health nursing is the application of
  nursing principles in conserving the health of
  workers in all applications.
• It involves prevention, recognition, and
  treatment of illness and injury, and requires
  special skills and knowledge in the areas of
  health education and counseling, environmental
  health, rehabilitation and human relations.

24
Concept of Risk Management

• Risk management consists of the various
  activities and strategies that an organization
  can use to protect itself from situations,
  circumstances, or events that may undermine its
  security.
• Risk managers work closely with safety and health
  personnel to reduce the risk of accidents and
  injuries on the job.
• They also work closely with insurance companies.

25
Role of Ergonomist

• Apply ergonomic principles to the design of a
  product, system, or work environment.

26
Achieving Certifications

• Certified Safety Professional Apply to the Board
  of Certified Safety Professionals meet the
  academic requirements meet the professional
  safety experience requirements pass the safety
  fundamentals examination and pass the
  comprehensive practice examination more on page
  69.
• Certified Industrial Hygienist Successful
  completion of the examination, meeting the
  educational requirements, and meeting the
  comprehensive professional level industrial
  hygiene experience requirements more on page
  70.
• Certified Professional Ergonomist To take the
  examination, individuals must meet the following
  requirements academic, work experience and work
  product more on page 71.
• See their web sites for more information as the
  requirements keep changing.

27
Summary

• The modern safety and health team is headed by a
  safety and health manager.
• The safety and health manager focuses on
  analysis, prevention, planning, evaluation,
  promotion, and compliance.
• Engineers design safety into products.
• Occupational physicians are medical doctors who
  specialize in workplace related health problems
  and injuries.
• Occupational health nurses specialize in
  conserving the health of workers through
  prevention, recognition, and treatment.
• Risk management involves risk reduction
  strategies and transferring risk to insurance
  companies.
• Professional certification is an excellent way to
  establish credentials in the safety, health, and
  environmental management profession.

28
Home work

• Answer questions 5, 9, 10, and 24 on page 75.
• 5. Briefly explain what a company must do to
  succeed in todays competitive global
  marketplace.
• 9. How can safety and health managers become
  certified in their profession?
• 10. Name three professional societies that a
  modern safety and health manager may join.
• 24. Explain how to achieve each of the following
  certifications certified safety professional,
  certified industrial hygienist, and certified
  professional ergonomist.