Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION TO
OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND
HEALTH
Md. Gulam Kibria
Lecturer, Dept. of IPE, BUET

Safety Professional

An individual who, by virtue of their

specialized knowledge and skill and/or
educational accomplishments, has achieved
professional status in the safety field.

What Is Occupational Safety and Health (OSH)?

Concerned with preserving and protecting human and
facility resources in the workplace.
Safety professionals try to prevent needless deaths
and injuries to workers.
Involves helping people by preventing them from
being injured or becoming ill due to hazards in their
workplaces.
Demonstrating concern for workers by ensuring they
are trained in hazard recognition and correctly
performing their jobs are jobs of the safety
professionals.

What Is Occupational Safety and Health (OSH)?

Safety professionals attempt to prevent catastrophic losses.
Example: When they conduct pre-inspections, safety
professionals may prevent explosions or fires that could
destroy entire buildings.
OSH is the management function in an organization
concerned with improving its quality and efficiency.
Example: (i) Safety professionals consider the way products
are moved from place to place and are concerned with
reducing lifting injury exposures, while minimizing product
movement.
(ii) They attempt to eliminate property and facility damage,
waste, and costs that lessen an organizations ability to
operate profitably.

What Is Occupational Safety and Health (OSH)?

In practice, occupational safety and health includes
moral and economic issues.
There is also a legal compulsion for companies to
promote occupational safety and health.
The role of the safety professional requires him or her
to monitor workplace conditions and advise
management on the importance of making critical
corrections for moral, legal, and economic reasons.
The effective safety professional will convince
management that providing a safe and healthy
working environment is the right thing to do.

Importance of Occupational Safety and Health

Economical Importance
Companies are attempting to remain profitable in an
ever more competitive global economy. For these
companies,
addressing
safety,
health,
and
environmental issues may mean more than good
business practice. For many companies, strong safety,
health, and environmental programs may actually
mean survival.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics there are
approximately five injury and illness cases per year
for every one hundred workers, or approximately four
million total per year. The costs associated with these
losses number in the billions of dollars.

Importance of Occupational Safety and Health

Moral Importance
In recent years there have been over 5,000 annual onthe-job fatalities in this country alone.
The staggering numbers of people involved in these
accidents are a real concern.
Behind the numbers are real peoplemothers,
fathers, sisters, brothers, spouses, sons, or daughters.
They are people like Bob whose lives may never be
the same again.

Importance of Occupational Safety and Health

Legal Importance
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA), the federal agency responsible for
workplace safety and health, attempts to address the
safety and health concerns faced by Americans.
OSHA may not only levy fines, but may also seek
criminal prosecution of business owners and
managers who willfully neglect the safety and health
of their employees.
Employers may also find themselves the target of
civil suits leveled by the victims and survivors of
workplace accidents.

Importance of Occupational Safety and Health

Legal Importance (contd.)

Employers with poor safety and health records must
also deal with rising medical insurance costs as well
as unfavorable workers compensation premiums.
Unfortunately, many employers have not had to bear
the full cost of injuring and killing members of their
workforces. Workers, uninformed and unaware of
their legal rights, have been forced to shoulder the
costs of the business not operating safely.
Continued reduction of accidents in the United States
will require an increase in initiative on the parts of all
parties involved, including employers, employees,
and federal and state governments.

Early Historical Examination of Occupational

Safety and Health
Ancient Greek and Roman Physicians
Code of Hammurabi: The Code of Hammurabi is a
well-preserved Babylonian law code of ancient
Mesopotamia, dating back to about 1754 BC.
It was primarily concerned with personal injury and
losses and it prescribed a schedule of punishments
and payments for wrongdoers in an attempt to
recompense victims of the listed violations.
Law #196: "If a man destroy the eye of another man,
they shall destroy his eye. If one break a man's bone,
they shall break his bone.

Early Historical Examination of Occupational

Safety and Health
Ancient Greek and Roman Physicians
Greek and Roman physicians, practicing between 400
BC and 300 AD, expressed concern for the health of
individuals exposed to the metals commonly used
during this period.
Galen, a Roman physician who lived during the
second century, wrote about occupational diseases
and the dangers of acid mists to copper miners. He
was also concerned with the mining, tanning, and
chemical occupations, noting several diseases
contracted by individuals working in those
professions.

Early Historical Examination of Occupational

Safety and Health
The European Renaissance
During the European Renaissance physicians and
chemists began noticing the relationship between
occupational activities and worker health and safety.
In 1437 (wrong info), Ulrich Ellenborg (wrong
spelling) recognized that the vapors of some metals,
including lead and mercury, were dangerous and
described the symptoms of industrial poisoning from
these sources. He also became aware of asbestos and
lung diseases among miners.

Early Historical Examination of Occupational

Safety and Health
The European Renaissance
The Great Fire of London (1666)

Early examples of building and fire codes resulted from this

Early Historical Examination of Occupational

Safety and Health
The European Renaissance
Bernardino Ramazzini, an Italian
physician, around 1700 published
The Diseases of Workers, considered
the first treatise on occupational
disease. Considered by some to be the
Father of Occupational Medicine
and by others as the Father of
Industrial Hygiene, he recommended
physicians ask their patients, What
is your trade? He urged students to
learn the nature of occupational
diseases in shops, mills, mines, or
wherever men toil.

Early Historical Examination of Occupational

Safety and Health
The European Renaissance
Dr. Percival Pott (around 1775) observed scrotal cancer in
chimney sweeps and determined its relationship to soot and
coal tar exposure. This finding initiated numerous regulations
called the Chimney Sweep Acts that were put in effect
between 1788 and 1875.
Sir Robert Peel, a mill owner (!), made the English Parliament
aware of the deplorable working conditions often existing in
the mills (Mines and Collieries Act 1842). He reported that
orphan labor was frequently used to perform demanding tasks
in less than sanitary conditions. His study of these deplorable
conditions revealed that the mean life expectancy of the
working class, under these terrible conditions, was only 22
years, while the mean age of the wealthier class was 44 years.

Early Historical Examination of Occupational

Safety and Health
The European Renaissance

Early Historical Examination of Occupational

Safety and Health
The Industrial Revolution
With advancing technology and the Industrial Revolution
came an increase in safety and health hazards.
The innovations of mechanical textile machinery, foundry
furnaces, steam engines, and numerous other inventions
created a new and more dangerous workplace environment.
Long workdays, unsanitary conditions, and demanding
physical labor increased the likelihood of injury and illness for
this new workforce.
At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in England Charles
Thackrah (1795-1833) became concerned with occupational
safety and health and studied the effects of arts, trades, life
habits, civic status, and professions upon health and longevity.
He became the first physician in the English-speaking world to
establish the practice of industrial medicine.

Early Historical Examination of Occupational

Safety and Health
The Industrial Revolution
In the United States, the Industrial Revolution began in the
early 19th century.
In Lowell, Massachusetts, young women and girls, as young
as six to ten years of age, worked long hours, often from five
in the morning until seven in the evening.
Their work required their hands to be placed very close to the
gears of spinning machines.
Many were injured or maimed in the moving gears and pulleys
of the textile machinery.
Their fingers were cut off or mangled with such frequency that
in 1877, Massachusetts passed a law requiring safeguards on
hazardous machinery that tied liability to actions of
employers.

Early Historical Examination of Occupational

Safety and Health
At Present Time
Workers today may be exposed to as
many workplace hazards as were their
ancestors in years past.
Factory machinery with unguarded
gears mangling fingers and hands has
been replaced by electronic office
equipment causing wrist and arm
injuries.
Workers still face chemical and toxic
hazards, as evidenced by industrial
disasters such as those at Three Mile
Island and Union Carbide Institute in
West Virginia.

Loss Prevention and Loss Control

Safety professionals are concerned with the elimination or
control of hazards that may result in injury, illness, and property
damage. They will often use techniques referred to as loss
prevention and loss control to accomplish that goal.

Loss prevention: A program designed to identify and correct

potential accident problems before they result in financial loss or
injury.

Loss control: A program designed to minimize incident-based

financial losses.
Example: Fire protection and prevention program.

Safety Management

Safety management encompasses the responsibilities

of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling
activities necessary to achieve an organizations loss
prevention and loss control goals.

What is Safety?
For the layperson, safety means not getting injured.
For the professional, safety means operating within an
acceptable or low probability of risk associated with
conditions or activities having the potential to cause
harm to people, equipment, facilities or the enterprise.

Types of OSH Losses

Worker-related health and safety losses:
Injuries
Illnesses
Fatalities.
Workplace-related losses:
Damaged equipment
Damaged raw materials
Damaged finished products
Damaged or destroyed facilities
Downtime
Service/production interruption
Loss of reputation.

Risk, Hazard and Accident

Risk: It can be defined as the measure of the

probability and severity of a loss event taking place.
(Risk evaluation in detail in chapter 5)
Hazard: It is a workplace condition or worker
action that can result in injury, illness, or other
organizational loss.

Accident: Accidents are unplanned events, often

resulting in injuries or damage, that often interrupt
routine operations. They are nearly always preceded by
unsafe acts of employees, hazardous conditions in
the workplace, or both. When appropriate action is
taken, most accidents can be eliminated.

The Safety and Health Professionals Role and

Responsibility

Accident Investigation
Work with Emergency Response Teams
Environmental Protection
Ergonomic Analysis and Modification
Fire Protection
Hazard Recognition
Hazardous Materials Management
Health Hazard Control
Inspection/Audit
Recordkeeping
Regulatory Compliance
Training