Safety and Health Movement

Then and Now

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.

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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.

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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.

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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 gentleman’s eye, his
own eye shall be caused to be lost.”

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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.

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Federick Taylor’s 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.
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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.

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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.

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Primary Reason behind the passage of the
OSH (Occupational Safety & Health) 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.

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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.

 Hawk’s 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 Hawk’s 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 Hawk’s 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.

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  The Hawks Nest Tunnel
disaster was a large-scale
incident of occupational
silicosis as the result of the
construction of the Hawks
Nest Tunnel near Gauley
Bridge, West Virginia, as
part of a hydroelectric
project. This project is
considered to be one of the
worst industrial disasters in
American history

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How workplace tragedies have affected the
Safety Movement
 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.

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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.

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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.

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The three E’s of Safety
Engineering, 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.

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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.

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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.
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Modern Industrial Companies may include
the following positions:
 Industrial Safety Engineer or Manager: They
are responsible for developing and carrying out the
company’s overall 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.

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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.
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Short Quiz
1. Differentiate Safety and Health (10 pts).
2. Define the following terms: fellow servant rule,
contributory negligence, and assumption of risk
(15 pts).
3. Explain the three E’s of Safety (15 pts).
4. What is the importance of Safety Management in
the workplace? (10 pts)

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