DESIGN FOR OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY:DEFINING OCCUPATIONAL INJURIES AND DISEASES

By -

DEFINING OCCUPATIONAL INJURIES AND DISEASES

Early in the 1980s, NIOSH defined the 10 most serious occupational disease and injury areas (CDC 1983). These were occupational lung diseases, musculoskeletal injuries, occupational cancers, acute trauma, cardiovascular diseases, disorders of reproduction, neurotoxic disorders, noise-induced hear- ing loss, dermatologic conditions, and psychological disorders. In April of 1996, NIOSH developed the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) (NIOSH 1996a), which identified 21 priority research areas to target and coordinate occupational safety and health research. Eight of the 21 target areas focus on occupational diseases and injuries. This was an update of the list from the early 1980s defined above. The new list identifies allergic and irritant dermatitis, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, fertility and pregnancy abnormalities, hearing loss, infectious disease, low-back disorders, musculoskeletal disorders of the upper extremities, and traumatic injuries (NIOSH 1996b) as serious problems. More detail on each disease or condition is provided in Table 1. Table 2 provides brief descriptions of various types of occupational diseases and injuries not included in Table 1 that were highlighted previously by CDC and NIOSH.

7. WORKPLACE HAZARDS

A list of all currently recognized and potential workplace hazards would be larger than this entire Handbook. The best places to start accumulating hazard information pertinent to your operations are the OSHA standards, NIOSH criteria documents, and government reports and publications. These are available on the websites listed in this chapter and from the U.S. Superintendent of Documents in Washington, DC. The websites have a great deal of useful information. Other excellent sources of information include the National Safety Council Safety manuals, NIOSH (1984), and Best’s Loss Control Guide. Other federal, state, and local agencies can also provide some aspects of occupational health and safety hazard information. At the federal level these include the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

It is important to comprehend the breadth and nature of occupational hazard exposures. To do this we can classify workplace hazard sources into broad categories that help us to understand their nature and potential controls. These are:

1. Physical agents such as noise and heat

2. Powered mechanical agents such as machinery and tools

3. Nonpowered mechanical agents such as hammers, axes, and knives

4. Liquid chemical agents such as benzene and toluene

5. Powdered materials such as pesticides, asbestos, sand, and coal dust

6. Gaseous or vaporous chemical agents such as nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide, and anhydrous ammonia

Design for Occupational Health and Safety-0088Design for Occupational Health and Safety-0089

7. Heavy metals such as lead and mercury

8. Biological agents such as bacteria and viruses

9. Genetically engineered agents

10. Other hazards, such as wet working surfaces, unguarded floor openings, job stress, and the unsafe behavior of others

These hazards enter the body through various avenues, including inhalation into the lungs and nose, absorption through the skin and other membranes, ingestion into the throat and stomach, trau- matic contact with various body surfaces and organs, and, in the case of job stress, through the cognitive mental processes. Descriptions of many of these hazards and definitions of adverse exposure levels are contained in NIOSH (1977).

Traditional hazards such as unexpected energy release and chemicals are still major concerns in the workplace. The use of lasers, robots, microwaves, x-rays, and imaging devices will become more common and will make many of the traditional problems of controlling energy release and limiting worker access to hazardous machine components even more challenging. These technologies will be even more problematic because of the complex nature of the mechanisms of energy release and the increased power of the forces involved. For instance, using x-rays for lithographic etching of computer chips could produce exposures that are substantially higher than with conventional diagnostic x-rays. The safety precautions for this type of instrument have to be much better than current standards for diagnostic equipment.

In addition to these emerging hazards, other new hazards will appear. Some will be the exotic products of genetic engineering and biotechnology, while others will be the products of our ability to harness the laws of physics and chemistry with advanced engineering designs. The future will see commercial uses of plasma gas generators for tool hardening, electron accelerators for generating tremendous power for x-ray lithography in microchip production and fusion power generation. These will become everyday tools used by thousands of workers, many of whom will not be well educated or knowledgeable about the tremendous power of the technology they will be working with.

While these physical and biological hazards will become more prevalent and dangerous than they are today, there will also be more physical and psychological work demands that can lead to psy- chological stress problems. Currently, the two fastest-rising workers’ compensation claim areas in the United States are cumulative musculoskeletal trauma and psychological distress. The rise in these problems can generally be related to two factors: first, greater media, worker, and employer awareness and knowledge about how the workplace can contribute to such problems; and second, huge increases in workplace automation that create conditions that produce these disorders. Dealing with these stress- induced problems may be even more difficult than dealing with the biological, chemical, and physical hazards.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MATERIAL-HANDLING SYSTEMS:STORAGE SYSTEMS

By -
Image
STORAGE SYSTEMS Various types of racks have been developed to store loads of different sizes and shapes. One of the simplest storage systems is block stacking, where loads (which may or may not be palletized) are simply stacked on top each other with no separate support structure. While block stacking is inex pensive and provides dense storage (i.e., little or no space is lost due to air between the loads), its use is limited in practice because only certain types of loads (such as appliances or furniture packed properly in cartons) can be stacked without crushing / damaging the loads at the bottom and access to individual loads (i.e., load selectivity) is very limited. In fact, loads must be removed from a stack, starting with the load at the top. This leads to last-in-first-out (LIFO) stock rotation, which is not desirable for many storage systems. A fundamental trade-off that exists in storage systems design is that between storage density (how well the cubic volume is utilized) ...
Read more

NETWORK OPTIMIZATION MODELS:THE MINIMUM SPANNING TREE PROBLEM

By -
Image
THE MINIMUM SPANNING TREE PROBLEM The minimum spanning tree problem bears some similarities to the main version of the shortest-path problem presented in the preceding section. In both cases, an undi r ecte d and connected network is being considered, where the given information includes some mea- sure of the positive length (distance, cost, time, etc.) associated with each link. Both problems also involve choosing a set of links that have the shortest total length among all sets of links that satisfy a certain property. For the shortest-path problem, this property is that the chosen links must provide a path between the origin and the destination. For the minimum spanning tree problem, the required property is that the chosen links must provide a path between ea c h pair of nodes. The minimum spanning tree problem can be summarized as follows: 1. You are given the nodes of a network but not the links. Instead, you are given the po- tential links and the positive length for each ...
Read more

DUALITY THEORY:THE ESSENCE OF DUALITY THEORY

By -
Image
THE ESSENCE OF DUALITY THEORY Given our standard form for the primal problem at the left (perhaps after conversion from another form), its dual problem has the form shown to the right. Thus, with the primal problem in maximizatio n form, the dual problem is in minimization form instead. Furthermore, the dual problem uses exactly the same pa r amete r s as the primal problem, but in different locations, as summarized below. 1. The coefficients in the objective function of the primal problem are the right-hand sides of the functional constraints in the dual problem. 2. The right-hand sides of the functional constraints in the primal problem are the coef- ficients in the objective function of the dual problem. 3. The coefficients of a variable in the functional constraints of the primal problem are the coefficients in a functional constraint of the dual problem. To highlight the comparison, now look at these same two problems in matrix notation (as introduced at the beginn...
Read more