National Safety Council case studies

National Safety Council, 1992, ISBN 0-87912-167-X, 386 pages, 62.95. Topics Indude environmental management, hazard communication, safety management and training, inspections, material handling and storage, accident investigation, and case studies. 

Similarly, those involved in safety and health for a company must convince top management that their efforts benefit the company. This is making a business case for safety and health. There are several studies and references that offer ideas for developing a business case. A National Safety Council publication offers some guidelines for preparing and promoting a business case. The publication offers the following simplified procedure ... 

Quantitative risk assessments have been performed on a variety of flame-retardants used both in upholstered furniture fabric and foam. The National Research Council performed a quantitative risk assessment on 16 chemicals (or chemical classes) identified by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The results were published in 2000.88 The 16 flame-retardants included in this NRC study were HBCD, deca-BDE, alumina trihydrate, magnesium hydroxide, zinc borate, calcium and zinc molybdates, antimony trioxide, antimony pentoxide and sodium antimonate, ammonium polyphosphates, phosphonic acid, (3- [hydroxymethyl]amino -3-oxopropyl)-dimethylester, organic phosphonates, tris (monochloropropyl) phosphate, tris (l,3-dichloropropyl-2) phosphate, aromatic phosphate plasticisers, tetrakis (hydroxymethyl) hydronium salts, and chlorinated paraffins. The conclusions of the assessment was that the following flame-retardants can be used on residential furniture with minimal risk, even under worst-case assumptions ... 

Rough estimates only exist for occupational injuries that are not required to be reported to the national safety administrations. The ratio between recordable cases (three lost workdays in West Germany) and first aid accidents is supposed to be approximately 1 9 (Skiba 1985) or 1 10 (Krause 1974). Similar results were indicaded by other studies. The U.S. Industrial Safety Research Council (Swain 1985) reports a relationship of 1 10 for disabling and nondisabling injuries. Heinrich (1959) suggests a figure of 1 serious accident to every 29 nonserious accidents in the U.S. industries. The relationships between serious and minor injuries, near misses and unsafe acts, will be discussed in detail in a later section. 

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