Reductions in Injury Rates

If employees can link their daily activities to safety results, then celebrating a reduction in injury rate can be useful, even motivating. However, it is critical to recognize behaviors, procedures, and processes that lead to fewer injuries or lower workers compensation costs [2]. Refer to Figure 16-18 for an overview of incident causes. 

Moreover, a possible regression to mean effect (Barnett et al., 2005) is expected because most of the enterprises participating are chosen because of their high injury rates in the year before intervention. The association between relative injury rates before the intervention and the reduction in injury rates could indicate that part of the effect of the program a regression to mean effect thus further research is needed to estimate the real effect of the program in terms of injury rates reduction. 

Safety celebrations typically start off with speeches by representatives from top management. They state their extreme pleasure in the lowered injury rate. Sometimes they display charts to compare the past with the improved present. Often a manager points out the amount of money the company saved with the reduction in injury rate. A sincere request for continuous improvement is made, as well as a promise for a bigger celebration if injury rates continue to decrease. 

The discussions of safety projects at the celebration mentioned previously included both successes and failures. Work teams not only presented the positive consequences of their special efforts, they also relived their disappointments, their frustrations, and their dead ends. They featured the highs and the lows. This made their presentations realistic. It also made clear the great amormt of dedicated work needed to carry out their action plans and contribute to the celebrated reduction in injury rate. 

Casualty rates per billion employee hours are shown in table 2.1. Immediately noticeable is the leap in injuries after 1975 caused by the definitional change that was referred to above. There are three major periods of interest. The first is during the 1920s when there was a forty percent reduction in fatality rates and a two-thirds reduction in injury rates. The second is the 1960s when the steady improvement in casualty rates was reversed. The third period is since 1980 when injury rates have fallen by two-thirds, and fatality rates by one-third. 

The effects of zf9-THC (5 mg) on the neurological symptoms of spinal cord injury have been studied in one patient [142], Numerous treatments over several months resulted in reduction in subjectively-rated spasticity for periods over 12 h, in improvement of bladder control and pain as well as in the quality of mood and sleep. In contrast to the above reports, Greenberg et al. found no improvement in 10 MS patients who smoked marijuana on a single occasion [143]. Actually, an impairement of balance was noted. 

Decontamination can also be accomplished by the application of creams containing fluorinated crosstinker monomers (Liu et al, 1999). Deactivation occurs when substances within the cream actively react with and decontaminate the agents. Care should be taken with administration of these creams, since they can trap chemical agents on the skin and prevent natural off-gassing. This may result in enhanced injury if inadvertently apphed after exposure to a chemical agent. In some cases, perfluorinated creams have caused an 18-fold reduction in the rate of skin absorption (Chilcott et al, 2002). 

In a major company with exceptionally good OSHA recordable and lost workday case rates, the chief executive officer declared that results were still not acceptable and that significant reductions in injuries and illnesses were to be made. The extensive and well-qualified staff of safety professionals convinced management to use incident investigation as one means of reinforcing its intent to achieve better results. 

Although according to programme theory PAEMSA II was effective in terms of the improvement in safety management, the effect in the reduction of injury rates is not clear (see Table 2). 

Reductions in injuries were accompanied by reductions in incident rates as well, resulting in considerable savings to both mines. Figure 28.8 shows the yearly costs of incidents and injuries to the mines. At Shirley Basin, cost decreased from a baseline average of 294,000 per year to an average of 29,000 dollars per year. At Navajo, costs decreased from a baseline average of 367,000 per year to an average of 39,000 per year. 

A 34 percent reduction in the rate of low-back injuries occurred during the study. 

Home Depot Stores Low-Back Injury Study 1989-94 Table I - Reduction in the Rate of Low-Back Injuries Was 34%... 

Measurement of performance. Quality Management requires that measures of performance be established for every activity. These measures include end-of-pipe measurement, such as amounts of material released into the environment or injury rates, and in-process measures of how efficiently you are managing, such as time to review safety improvement proposals or total resources expended on PSM. Each team should be required to identify potential performance measures for the processes they are developing and the activities these processes manage. Many of the end-of-pipe measures will already exist these should be critically examined to ensure that they truly measure performance and are not unduly influenced by other factors. For example, the number of accidents in a fleet of road vehicles is almost directly dependent on the number of miles driven with no improvement in performance, a reduction in miles driven would reduce the number of accidents. 

Another means of metabolic activation is the cyclic reduction/oxidation of the parent compound, resulting in high rates of consumption of NADPH and production of superoxide anion. Either the depletion of NADPH and/or the formation of reactive oxygen radicals could lead to cellular injury. 

However, this does not preclude following the effects on plant growth of chronic exposure to low levels of sulfur dioxide. Injury is manifested in altered growth rates, reduction in plant size, and alteration in reproductive capacity, all of which are visible only if the plants can be compared with others of the same variety growing under nonpolluted condi-... 

When mild hypothermia was first shown to be beneficial, the assumption was that a substantial portion of its neuroprotective effect stemmed from a reduction in cerebral metabolism. However, studies on cerebral metabolic rate (CMR) made it clear that the degree of neuro-pathological injury following ischemia with mild hypothermic treatment did not correlate with the magnitude of metabolic depression observed (42). A reduction in temperature from 37°C to 34°C produces a 15-20% reduction in cerebral metabolism (approx 5-7% per °C), which is far less than the 50% decrease seen with electroencephalogram (EEG) silence. Furthermore, reductions in metabolism produced by anesthetics vs hypothermia are not equally neuroprotective (43). Thus, hypothermic neuroprotection cannot be explained by alterations in metabolic rate alone. 

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