Safety and Health Movement

1
Chapter 1

• Safety and Health Movement
• Then and Now

2
Major Topics

• Developments before the Industrial Revolution.
• Milestones in the safety movement.
• Tragedies that have changed the safety movement.
• Role of organized labor.
• Development of accident prevention programs.
• Development of Safety Organizations.
• Safety and Health Movement Today.

3
Safety Versus Health

• Safety is concerned with injury causing
  situations. Safety is concerned with hazards to
  humans that result from sudden severe conditions.
• Health is concerned with disease causing
  conditions. Health deals with adverse reactions
  to prolonged exposure to dangerous but less
  intense hazards.
• An overly stressed worker may be prone to
  unintentionally forget safety precautions and
  thus may cause an accident.

4
Causes of Improvement in Workplace Safety

• Improvements in safety have been the result of
  pressure for legislation to promote safety and
  health, the steadily increasing cost associated
  with accidents and injuries, and the
  professionalization of safety as an occupation.
• Improvements in the future are likely to come as
  a result of greater awareness of the cost
  effectiveness and resultant competitiveness
  gained from a safe and healthy workforce.

5
Code of Hammurabi

• The Code of Hamurabi (Babylonian king in 2000
  B.C.) contained clauses dealing with injuries,
  allowable fees for physicians, and monetary
  damages assessed against those who injured
  others.
• If a man had caused the loss of a gentlemans
  eye, his own eye shall be caused to be lost.

6
Development of the First Organized Safety Program

• When the industrial sector began to grow in the
  United States hazardous working conditions were
  commonplace.
• Factory inspection was introduced in
  Massachusetts in 1897.
• In 1869 the Pennsylvania legislature passed a
  mine safety law that required two exits from all
  mines.
• In 1892, the first recorded safety program was
  established in a Joliet, Illinois steel plant.

7
Federick Taylors Connection to the Safety
Movement

• Around 1900 Federick Taylor began studying
  efficiency in manufacturing.
• His purpose was to identify the impact of various
  factors on efficiency, productivity, and
  profitability.
• He drew the connection between lost personnel
  time and management policies and procedures.
• This connection between safety and management
  represented a major step towards broad-based
  safety consciousness.

8
Development of the National Safety Council

• The Association of Iron and Steel Electrical
  Engineers (AISEE) formed in the early 1900s,
  pressed for a national conference on safety.
• As a result the first meeting of the Cooperative
  Safety Congress (CSC) took place in Milwaukee in
  1912.
• A year after the meeting of the CSC, the National
  Council of Industrial Safety was established in
  Chicago.
• In 1915, this organization changed its name to
  National Safety Council (NSC).
• NSC is now the premier safety organization in the
  United States.

9
Impact of Labor Shortages in World War II on the
Safety Movement

• From the end of World War I (1918) through the
  1950s safety awareness grew steadily.
• During this period industry in the United States
  arrived at two critical conclusions
• (1) There is a definite connection between
  Quality and Safety.
• (2) Off-the-job accidents have a negative impact
  on productivity.
• This became clear to manufacturers during World
  War II when call-up and deployment of troops had
  employers struggling to meet their labor needs.
• For these employers, loss of a skilled worker due
  to injury or for any other reason created an
  excessive hardship.

10
Primary Reason behind the passage of the OSH Act

• The 1960s saw the passage of a flurry of
  legislation promoting workplace safety. These
  laws applied to a limited audience of workers.
• According to the Society of Manufacturing
  Engineers (SME) more significant legislation was
  needed because the state legislated safety
  requirements only in specific industries had
  inadequate safety and health standards, and had
  inadequate budgets for enforcement.
• In the late 1960s more than 14,000 employees were
  killed annually in connection with their jobs,
  and work injury rates were rising.
• These were the primary reasons for the passage of
  the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act
  (OSH Act) of 1970. It represents the most
  significant legislation to date in the history of
  the safety movement.

11
How workplace tragedies have affected the Safety
Movement

• Safety and health tragedies in the workplace have
  greatly accelerated the pace of the safety
  movement in the United States.
• Hawks Nest Tragedy Workers spent as many as 10
  hours per day breathing the dust created by
  drilling and blasting a passageway through a
  mountain located in the Hawks Nest region of
  West Virginia that had an unusually high silica
  content. Silicosis is a disease that normally
  takes 10 to 30 years to show up in exposed
  workers. At Hawks Nest workers began dying in as
  little time as a year. Approximately one million
  workers in the United States are still exposed to
  silica every year, and 250 people die annually
  from silicosis. Today administrative controls,
  engineering controls, and personal protective
  equipment are used to protect workers in a dusty
  environment.
• Asbestos Menace In 1964 Dr. Selikoff linked
  asbestos to lung cancer and respiratory diseases.
  It was found in homes, schools , offices,
  factories, ships and filter of cigarettes. In the
  1970s and 1980s asbestos became a controlled
  material.
• Bhopal Tragedy In 1984 over 40 tons of Methyl
  isocyanate (MIC) and other lethal gases,
  including hydrogen cyanide leaked into the
  northern end of Bhopal killing over 3000 people.
  Union Carbide had to pay 470 million in
  compensatory damage. In the US it led to the
  Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know
  Act (EPCRA) of 1986.

12
Role of Organized Labor in Advancement of Safety
Movement

• Organized labor has played a crucial role in the
  development of the safety movement in the United
  States.
• From the Industrial Revolution time, organized
  labor has fought for safer working conditions and
  appropriate compensation for workers injured on
  the job.
• Many of the earliest developments in the safety
  movement were the result of long and hard-fought
  battles by organized labor.

13
Fellow Servant Rule, Contributory Negligence, and
Assumption of Risk

• The Fellow Servant Rule held that employers were
  not liable for workplace injuries that resulted
  from the negligence of other employees.
• Contributory Negligence If the actions of
  employees contributed to their own injuries, the
  employer was not held liable.
• Assumption of Risk People who accept a job
  assume the risks that go with it.
• These employer biased laws were overturned in all
  states except in New Hampshire where the fellow
  servant rule still applies.

14
The three Es of SafetyEngineering, Education,
and Enforcement

• The Engineering aspects of a safety program
  involve making design improvements to both
  product and process to decrease potential
  hazards.
• The Education aspect of a safety program ensures
  that employees know how to work safely, why it is
  important to do so, and that safety is expected
  by management.
• The Enforcement aspect of a safety program
  involves making sure that employees abide by
  safety policies, rules, regulations, practices
  and procedures. Supervisors and fellow employees
  play a key role in the enforcement aspect of
  modern safety programs.

15
Development of Safety Organizations

• Fig 1-3, page 12 Organizations concerned with
  workplace safety American Society of Safety
  Engineers, National Safety Council (NSC),
• Fig 1-4, page 13 Governmental Agencies concerned
  with workplace safety Environmental Protection
  Agency (EPA), National Institute for Occupational
  Safety and Health (NIOSH), Occupational Safety
  and Health Administration (OSHA),

16
Integrated Approach to Safety and Health

• Learn more through sharing knowledge about health
  problems in the workplace, particularly those
  caused by toxic substances.
• Provide a greater level of expertise in
  evaluating health and safety problems.
• Provide a broad database that can be used to
  compare health and safety problems experienced by
  different companies in the same industry.
• Encourage accident prevention.
• Make employee health and safety a high priority.
• OSHA reinforces the integrated approach by
  requiring companies to have a plan for doing at
  least the following
• 1. Providing appropriate medical treatment for
  injured or ill workers.
• 2. Regularly examining workers who are exposed to
  toxic substances.
• 3. Having a qualified first-aid person available
  during all working hours.

17
Modern Industrial Companies may include the
following positions

• Industrial Hygiene Chemist and/or Engineer
  Companies that use toxic substances periodically
  test the work environment. Dust levels,
  ventilation and noise levels are also monitored.
  Unsafe conditions or hazardous levels of exposure
  can be identified and corrected or preventive
  measures can be taken.
• Radiation Control Specialist Companies that use
  or produce radioactive material employ
  specialists to monitor radiation levels to which
  workers may be exposed, test workers for level of
  exposure, respond to radiation accidents, develop
  plans for handling radiation accidents, and
  implement decontamination procedures when
  necessary.
• Industrial Safety Engineer or Manager They are
  responsible for developing and carrying out the
  companiysoverall health and safety program
  including accident prevention, accident
  investigation, and education and training. (Jobs
  with this one course)
• The complexities of the modern workplace have
  made safety and health a growing profession.

18
Summary

• A milestone in safety is the passage of OSHA in
  1970.
• Labor unions have worked to overturn anti labor
  laws inhibiting safety.
• Health problems in the workplace include lung
  disease in miners, and lung cancer tied to
  asbestos.
• The asbestos menace, and Bhopal disaster have
  changed the face of the safety movement.
• Accident prevention techniques include fail safe
  designs, lockout, PPE, redundancy and timed
  replacements.
• A leading safety organization is the American
  Society of Safety Engineers.
• A safety team may include a safety engineer,
  nurse, and dietician.

19
Home Work

• Do questions 1, 8, 10 and 11 on pages 16-17 and
  turn it in next week.
• 1. To what causes can improvement in workplace
  safety made to date be attributed?
• 8. Explain the primary reasons behind the passage
  of the OSH Act.
• 10. Define the following terms fellow servant
  rule, contributory negligence, and assumption of
  risk.
• 11. Explain the three Es of Safety.