Industrial safety

Industrial safety is the science and art dedicated to the anticipation, recognition, evaluation, and control of workplace hazards that may cause worker injuries or illnesses. Today’s industrial safety is a person trained and educated in physics, biology, chemistry, safety, engineering, or environmental sciences. The industrial hygienist must have a broad spectrum of knowledge in safety, ventilation, illumination, radiation, biological sciences, noise, ergonomics, thermal stressors, and a wide variety of other topics. Each of these topics will be discussed in detail within their own individual Topics. The industrial hygienist, while concerned with physical safety, focuses on the prevention of worker illnesses caused by work place exposures to various chemicals, substances, and elements.

Anticipation of Hazards

The industrial safety must be capable of anticipating workplace hazards. Before ever arriving at a job site or facility, the industrial hygienist can perform preliminary research to determine the type of work and the potential exposures that may be present. This can be performed by asking and answering the following questions:

• What type of facility or site is it?
• What types of operations or processes are being performed?
• What hazardous materials are present or are likely to be present?
• Are facility schematics or drawings available for review?
• What standard operating procedures are available?
• Are material safety data sheets (MSDSs) available for review?

Recognition of Hazards

This phase of the assessment process is conducted primarily through walkthrough inspections by the industrial hygienist. This process is more qualitative than quantitative in nature. During the walkthrough inspection, the industrial hygienist will begin to identify the specifi c processes and operations and the potential hazards that each may pose to workers. Once the walkthrough inspection has been completed the industrial hygienist will develop a strategy to further evaluate the extent of each hazard poses.

Evaluation of Hazards

The evaluation process may require the use of specialized sampling equipment to actually quantify the workers’ exposure to the specifi c hazards. Depending on the type of hazard, representative samples will be collected using various methodologies that will be discussed in this chapter. Once samples have been analyzed by an accredited laboratory, then the industrial hygienist will formulate a plan to control the hazards.

Control of Hazards

Once the plan to control the hazards has been established, the industrial hygienist will develop a plan of action to eliminate, minimize, or mitigate the hazards, which may include engineering controls, administrative controls, or personal protective equipment (PPE). Through the elimination or mitigation of a hazard, the risk to the employee can be drastically reduced.

Safety Concept:

A safety program should always include engineering safety at the design and equipment installation stage, education of employees in safe practices, concerns the attitude of employees and management. It should motivate all the industrial employees in accident prevention and safety consciousness. It must provide all safety instructions and training essential for the employees to think, act and work safely so that the number of accidents can be minimized. Safety education must give knowledge about safe and unsafe mechanical conditions and personal practices. Safety training must involve induction and orientation of new recruits to safety rules and practices, explaining safety function, during their initial job training through efforts made by the first level supervisors. Formulating employee’s safety committees, holding of employee’s safety meetings, display of charts, posters, film etc. are very much essential in each industry for stressing the need to act safely. There should be sufficient display of safety posters and films from time to time to remind industrial workers to particular hazards/accidents, providing simple and convenient safety devices, providing time to the worker for setting, removing and replacing any necessary safety devices. All industrial personnel should be asked from the first day to start working to adopt safety measures because an unskilled worker should be familiar fully to work safely. It must ask the shop supervisor to display all the safety aspects near the work centre. It should also mail safety information and sufficient literature pertaining to safety for reading at homes of all the industrial employees. It must welcome all safety suggestions. It must mark categorically all accident areas. It must conduct safety training lectures periodically for providing wide publicity to safety aspects for everything including men, machines and materials.

MESSAGE OF THE WORD 'SAFETY':

The word 'safety' is defined in foregoing section. Now its message is philosophically explained below by each letter of its spelling.

Five 'E' are stated as fundamentals for safety. They are Education, Engineering, Enforcement, Enthusiasm and Example setting.

Five 'L' are important-Learning, Leadership, Loyalty, Labour protection and Lawfulness.

Five'M' are important - Man, Material, Machine, Money and Management.

Five T' are important - People, Protection, Productivity, Prosperity and Proficiency.

Philosophy of each of these words can be discussed with plenty of examples. They all need utmost attention.