SAFETY AND HEALTH MOVEMENT

LECTURE # 1
 The safety movement in the United States has developed
gradually since the early 1900s.

 In that time period, industrial accidents were common in

this country; for example, in 1907 over 3,200 people
were killed in mining accidents.

 Working conditions for industrial employees today have

improved significantly.
DEVELOPMENTS BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
 It is important for students of industrial health and safety
to first study the past.
 Understanding the past can help safety and health
professionals examine the present and future with a sense
of perspective and continuity.
 The continuum begins with the days of the ancient
Babylonians. During that time, around 2000 BC, their ruler
Hammurabi developed his Code of Hammurabi.
 The code included all the laws of the land at that time,
showed Hammurabi to be a just ruler, and set a model
followed by other Mesopotamian kings .
 The significance of the code from the perspective of safety
and health is that it contained clauses
 dealing with injuries,

 allowable fees for physicians, and

 financial damages assessed against those who injured

others.
 This clause from the code illustrates Hammurabi’s concern
for the proper handling of injuries; for example, “If a man
has caused the loss of a gentleman’s eye, his own eye shall
be caused to be lost,”
 MILESTONES IN THE SAFETY MOVEMENT

 During the Industrial Revolution (1760 - 1850), child labor in

factories was common. The hours were long, the work hard,
and the conditions often unhealthy and unsafe.
 The Industrial Revolution was of great importance to the
economic development of the United States.
 The first industrial revolution occurred in Great Britain and
Europe during the late eighteenth century. The Industrial
Revolution then centered on the United States and Germany.
 The era ‫ عهد‬known as the Industrial Revolution was a period
in which fundamental changes occurred in agriculture, textile
and metal manufacture, transportation, economic policies
and the social structure in England.

 The Industrial Revolution itself refers to a change from hand

and home production to machine and factory. However, the
industrial revolution truly changed American society and
economy into a modern urban ‫متحضر‬-industrial state
 When the industrial sector began to grow in the United
States, hazardous working conditions were common.
 Factory inspection was introduced in Massachusetts in
1867.
 The Bureau ‫ دائرة رسمية‬of Labor Statistics (BLS) was
established in 1869 to study industrial accidents and
report related information about those accidents.
 Around 1900, Frederick Taylor began studying efficiency
in manufacturing.
 His purpose was to identify the impact of various factors
on efficiency, productivity, and profitability.

 Although safety was not a major focus of his work. Taylor

did draw a connection between lost personnel time and
management policies and procedures.

 This connection between safety and management

represented a major step toward broad-based safety
consciousness.
 In 1907, the U.S. Department of the Interior created the
Bureau of Mines to investigate accidents, examine health
hazards, and make recommendations for improvements.

 One of the most important developments in the history

of the safety movement occurred in 1908 when an early
form of workers’ compensation was introduced in the
United States.
 TRAGEDIES THAT HAVE CHANGED
THE SAFETY MOVEMENT

 Safety and health tragedies in the workplace have greatly

accelerated the speed of the safety movement in the
United States.
 Three of the most significant events in the history of the
safety and health movement were;
HAWK’S NEST TRAGEDY

 In the 1930s, the public began to take notice of the health

problems suffered by employees who worked in dusty

environments.

 The Great Depression was indirectly responsible for the

attention given to an occupational disease that came to be

known as silicosis.
 As the economic crash spread, business after business shut
down and laid off its workers.

 Unemployed miners and foundry (workplace for casting

metal) workers began to experience problems finding new
jobs when physical examinations revealed they had lung
damage from breathing silica (silicon dioxide).
 Insurance companies recommended pre-employment
physicals as a way to prevent future claims based on pre-
existing conditions.

 Applicants with silica-damaged lungs were refused

employment. Many of them took legal action.

 A company was given a contract to drill a passageway

through a mountain located in the Hawk’s Nest region of
West Virginia.
 Workers spent as many as 10 hours per day breathing the
dust created by drilling and blasting. It turned out that this
particular mountain 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.

 By the time the project was completed, hundreds had died.

 Today, dust-producing industries use a wide variety of
administrative controls, engineering controls, and
personal protective equipment to protect workers in
dusty environments.

 However, silicosis is still a problem. Approximately one

million workers in the United States are still exposed to
silica every year, and 250 people die annually from
silicosis.
 ASBESTOS HAZARD

 Asbestos was once considered a “miracle” fiber, but in 1964

Dr. Selikoff told 400 scientists at a conference on the

biological effects of asbestos that this widely used material
was killing workers.

 At the time of Selikoff’s findings, asbestos was one of the

most widely used materials in the United States, It was

found in homes, schools, offices, factories, ships, and even in
the filters of cigarettes.
 Dr. Selikoff studied the mortality rate of 17,800 workers
who had been exposed to asbestos.
 Finally, in the 1970s and 1980s, asbestos became a
controlled material.
 Regulations governing the use of asbestos were developed
and standards for exposure were established.
 Now, there is an industry wide effort to protect workers
who must remove asbestos from old buildings and ships
during remodeling, renovation, or demolition projects.
 BHOPAL TRAGEDY

 On the morning of December 3, 1984, over 40 tons of

methyl isocyanate (MIC) and other poisonous gases,
including hydrogen cyanide, leaked into the northern end
of Bhopal, killing more than 3,000 people in its result.

 After the accident, it was discovered that the protective

equipment that could stopped the approaching disaster
was not in full working order.
 The International Medical Commission visited Bhopal to
assess the situation and found that as many as 50,000
other people were exposed to the poisonous gas and may
still suffer disability as a result.

 This disaster shocked the world. Union Carbide, the owner

of the chemical plant in Bhopal, India, where the incident
occurred, was charged.
 ROLE OF ORGANIZED LABOR
 Organized labor has played a critical role in the
development of the safety movement in the United
States.

 From the start of the industrial Revolution in this

country, organized labor has fought for safer working
conditions and appropriate compensation for workers
injured on the job.
 ROLE OF SPECIFIC HEALTH PROBLEMS
 Specific health problems associated with the workplace have
contributed to the development of the modern safety and
health movement. These problems include:
 Lung diseases in coal miners

 Mercury poisoning is another health problem that has

contributed to the development of the safety and health

movement by focusing public attention on unsafe conditions
in the workplace.
 Lung cancer tied to asbestos.
 These health problems contributed to public awareness
of dangerous and unhealthy working conditions that, in
turn, led to
 legislation‫لقوانين‬ ‫إصدار ا‬,
 regulations ‫ا للوائح‬,
 better work procedures, and
 better working conditions.
 DEVELOPMENT OF ACCIDENT PREVENTION TECHNIQUES

 Widely used accident prevention techniques include:

Failure minimization
Fail-safe designs
Isolation
Lockouts
Personal protective equipment
Timed replacements
 For example, according to the Society of Manufacturing
Engineers, during world war 2, industry began to realize the
following:
 Improved engineering could prevent accidents.
 Employees were willing to learn and accept safety rules.
 Safety rules could be established and enforced.
 Financial savings from safety improvement could be
obtained by savings in compensation and medical bills.
 With these realizations came the long-needed incentive for
employers to begin playing an active role in creating and
maintaining a safe workplace.
 Early safety programs were based on 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.

 By altering the design of a product, the processes used to

manufacture it can be simplified and, as a result, made less
dangerous.
 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.

 Safety education typically covers the what, when, where,

why, and how of safety.

 The enforcement aspect of a safety program involves

making sure that employees abide ‫ ا لتزم‬by safety policies,
rules, regulations, practices, and procedures.

 Supervisors and fellow employees play a key role in the

enforcement aspects of modern safety programs.
 DEVELOPMENT OF SAFETY ORGANIZATIONS
 The development of the safety movement in the United
States has been helped by the parallel development of
safety organizations. Well-known among these are:
 The National Safety Council (NSC)

 The National Safety Management Society

 The American Society of Safety Engineers

 The American Industrial Hygiene ‫ علم ا لصحة‬Association

 SAFETY AND HEALTH MOVEMENT TODAY
 Today, there is widespread understanding of the
importance of providing a safe and healthy workplace.

 One of the earliest and most speaking promoters of the

cooperative or integrated approach was H. G. Dyktor. He
proposed the following objectives of integration:
 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.

 INTEGRATED APPROACH TO SAFETY AND HEALTH
 This integrated approach has become the norm that
demonstrates the safety and health movement of today.

 By working together and drawing on their own respective

areas of expertise, safety and health professionals are
better able to identify, predict, control, and correct safety
and health problems.
 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.
 Smaller companies may contract out the fulfillment ‫استيفاء‬
of these requirements. Larger companies often maintain a
staff of safety and health professionals.

 According to Hamilton and Hardy, the health and safety

staff in a modern industrial company may include the
following positions:
Industrial hygiene chemist and/or engineer
 Companies that use toxic substances may employ
Industrial hygiene chemists periodically to test the work
environment and the people who work in it.

 In this way, unsafe conditions or hazardous levels of

exposure can be identified early and corrective or
preventive measures can be taken.
Radiation control specialist
 Companies that use or produce radioactive materials
employ radiation control specialists who are typically
electrical engineers or physicists.
 Those specialists monitor the radiation levels to which
workers may be exposed, test workers for levels of
exposure, respond to radiation accidents, develop
companywide plans for handling radiation accidents, and
implement decontamination procedures when necessary.
 Industrial safety engineer or manager
 Individuals serving as industrial safety engineers or managers
are safety and health generalists with specialized education and
training.
 In larger companies, they may be devoted ‫ مكرسن فسه‬to safety

and health matters. In smaller companies, they may have

other duties in addition to safety and health.
 In either case, they are responsible for developing and

carrying out the company’s overall safety and health program

including accident prevention, accident investigation, and
education and training.
Other professionals who may be part of a company’s
safety and health team include
 occupational nurses,

 physicians,

 psychologists,

 counselors,

 educators, and

 dietitians.
 NEW MATERIALS, NEW PROCESSES, AND
NEW PROBLEMS

 The job of the safety and health professional is more

complex than it has ever been.
 The materials out of which products are made have
become increasingly complex and unusual.
 Engineering metals now include carbon steels, alloy steels,
high-strength low-alloy steels, stainless steels, managing
stasis, cast steels, cast irons, tungsten, molybdenum,
titanium, aluminum, copper, magnesium, lead, tin, zinc, and
powdered metals.

 Each of these metals requires its own specialized processes.

 Nonmetals are more numerous ‫ متع دد‬and have also
become more complex.
 Plastics, plastic alloys and blends, advanced composites,
fibrous materials, elastomers, and ceramics also bring
theft own potential hazards to the workplace.
 In addition to the more complex materials being used in
modern industry and the new safety and health concerns
associated with them, modern industrial processes are
also becoming more complex.

 As these processes become automated, the potential

hazards associated with them often increase.
 Computers; lasers; industrial robots; nontraditional
processes such as explosive welding; photochemical
machining, laser beam machining, ultrasonic machining, and
chemical milling; automated material handling; water-jet
cutting expert systems; flexible manufacturing cells; and
computer-integrated manufacturing have all introduced new
safety and health problems in the workplaces and new
challenges for the safety and health professional.
 RAPID GROWTH IN THE PROFESSION
 The complexities of the modern workplace have made
safety and health a growing profession.
 Associate and baccalaureate ‫ ا لثانوية‬degree programs in
industrial technology typically include industrial safety
courses.
 Several colleges and universities offer full degrees in
occupational‫ مهني‬safety and health.
 The expected result of the increased attention given to safety
and health is that more large companies are employing
safety and health professionals and more small companies
are assigning these duties to existing employees.

 This is a trend that is likely to continue as employers see their

responsibilities for safety and health spread beyond the
workplace to the environment, the community, the users of
their products, and the recipients.