Employees at risk

One method of identifying employee populations at high levels of occupational risk (and thus in greater need of safety and health training) is to pinpoint hazardous occupations. Even within industries that are hazardous in general, there are some employees who operate at greater risk than others. In other cases, the hazardousness of an occupation is influenced by the conditions under which it is performed, such as noise, heat, cold, safety, or health hazards in the surrounding area. In these situations, employees should be trained not only on how to perform their job safely, but also on how to operate within a hazardous environment. 

Research has identified the following variables as being related to a disproportionate share of injuries and illnesses at the worksite on the part of employees  

The age of the employee (younger employees have higher incidence rates). 

The size of the firm (in general terms, medium-size firms have higher incidence rates than smaller or larger firms). 

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Nonemergency medical care should be arranged for hazardous waste site personnel who are experiencing health effects resulting from an exposure to hazardous substances. Off-site medical care should make sure that any potential job-related symptoms or illnesses are evaluated in the context of the employee s exposure. Off-site medical personnel should investigate and treat non-job-related illnesses that may put the employee at risk because of task requirements [1]. 

Serious considerations of alternative materials Adequate containment of identified carcinogens Medical screening of employees at risk ... 

OSHA requires that hepatitis B vaccine be offered to aU employees at risk of potential exposure as a regular or occasional part of their duties. CDCs Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommends that medical technologists, phlebotomists, and pathologists be vaccinated witli hepatitis B vaccine. It is a regulatory mandate that all of the above laboratory employees at a minunum at least be given the option to freely receive the hepatitis B vaccine. 

Hazards associated with all activities involving chemicals that could put the employee at risk of injury or illness shall be evaluated. Those activities include, but are not limited to a) design of new facilities or modification of existing facilities and equipment, b) operations and procedures and c) equipment, products and services that are selected or purchased. 

The aim of proactive job surveys is to identify specific jobs and processes that may put employees at risk of developing WRMDs. Job surveys are typically performed after the jobs identified by the previous two surveillance components have been rectified. Job surveys of all jobs or a sample of representatives should be performed. Analysis of existing records will be used to estimate the potential magnitude of the problem in the workplace. The number of employees in each job, department, or similar population will be determined first. Then the incidence rates will be calculated on the basis of hours worked, as follows ... 

The area of robotic technologies has improved and expanded substantially. Safety and health professionals may want to explore the potential of the utilization of robotic technology in areas requiring heavy or repetitive lifting, repetitive performance of a singular job function, or when the job function places the employee at risk for exposures to harmful elements, among other risks. American industry has embraced the utilization of industrial robots and the expansion in use has increased substantially, primarily to improve operational performance. However, safety and health professionals should consider the utilization of robotic instruments to reduce inherent risks within the workplace. 

Behavior-based safety is based on one of the oldest and most outdated approaches to safety — the Heinrich premise that 88% of all industrial accidents are caused primarily by unsafe acts of persons [p. 1]. Behavior-based safety does not focus on what really causes accidents. Injuries and illnesses are caused by exposures to hazards. What do I mean by hazards Hazards include any aspect of technology or activity that produces risk. If the work methods designed and prescribed put employees at risk, those methods are hazardous [p. 5]. 

For as long as the behavior-based safety literature ignores injury causal factors that derive from (as cited above) work methods designed and prescribed (that) put employees at risk, it can be expected that Mr. Howe and other union representatives will continue to make the case that behavior-based safety is not what some of the practitioners make it out to be. One of Mr. Howe s concerns is the presentations by speakers, of which there have been many, who would have the audience believe that behavior-based safety is all that needs to be done. 

Are employees at risk of exposure to inorganic arsenic, lead, cadmium or cadmium compounds, benzene, coke-oven emissions, occupational exposure to blood or other potentially infectious materials, or cotton dust ... 

The biological monitoring program has been designed for three main purposes 1) to identify employees at risk of adverse health effects from excess, chronic exposure to cadmium 2) to prevent cadmium-induced disease(s) and 3) to detect and minimize existing cadmium-induced dis-ease(s). 

While the policy of screening out employees at risk may seem... 

Integrating behavior-based safety into the management system to identify and recommend solutions for employees at risk Identify management behaviors that may be systemic in nature Recognizing successes and achievement of the management system... 

A simple health monitoring system should be agreed with employees or their representatives that includes a questionnaire checklist (available on the HSE website) to be completed once a year by employees at risk. 

In the exposure control plan, are employers required to list specific tasks that place the employee at risk for all job classifications ... 

It is a requirement of the regulations that employers ensure that, where appropriate, adequate health surveillance is provided for employees at risk of exposure to substances and activities that have the potential to cause ill health. 

Remember that effective hazard analysis leads to effective hazard control or correction Identify employees at risk of exposure and evaluate control measures Establish a baseline to be used throughout a continuous or ongoing process Use inspections to identify and assess hazards in each work environment Determine potential hazard severity and possible effects on workers Evaluate PPE effectiveness... 

The Regulations introduced a control framework by requiring assessment of the extent of the problem, by carrying out noise surveys to identify work areas and employees at risk control by engineering measures, isolation or segregation of affected employees supply and use of protective equipment and administrative means and monitoring by reassessment at intervals to ensure that the controls used remain effective. 

The cornerstone of an effective workplace security plan is appropriate training of aU anployees, supervisors, and managers. Employers with employees at risk of workplace violence mnst edncate them about the risk factors associated with the various types of workplace violence and provide appropriate training in crime awareness, assault and rape prevention, and defusing hostile sitna-tions. In addition, employers must instruct their employees about the steps to be taken during an emergency incident. 

Heinrich s well-known Law of Safety implicates at-risk behavior as a root cause of most near hits and injuries (Heinrich et al., 1980). Over the past 20 years, various behavior-based research studies have verified this aspect of Heinrich s Law by systematically evaluating the impact of interventions designed to lower employees at-risk behaviors. Feedback from behavioral observations was a common ingredient in most of the successful intervention processes, whether the feedback was delivered verbally, graphically by tables and charts, or through corrective action. See, for example, the comprehensive review by Petersen, 1989, or individual research articles by Chhokar and Wallin, 1984 Geller et al., 1980 Komaki et al., 1980 and Sulzer-Azaroff and De Santamaria, 1980. 

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