The Productive Worker

The first step was taken in the late 19th/early 20th century, with increasing power of intensive industrialisation. It incorporated three fundamental concepts that were intended to obtain more productive workers . 

Taylorism was adapted but did not disappear, particularly in manual activities (it is not so easily applicable to intellectual activities by its nature). One in five 

Amalberti, Navigating Safety, SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-6549-8 4, The Authoifs) 2013 

These fundamental features of approaches to human and organisational factors underwent little further change until the 1960s. Knowledge of ergonomics and working conditions increased, but there was no revolutionary change. 

The second step accompanied the increasing power of high-risk industries in 

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Medical devices and pharmaceuticals are two closely related communities. Their materials of concern are agents intended as therapeutics or as components of devices to be used in healthcare, where the production worker or healthcare provider (doctor, nurse, or pharmacist) may have a significant chance of exposure, but the major concern is for those patients who receive or use the drug or device. Various centers of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are the primary U.S. regulators. 

Because the PBB concentrations in people (see Table 2) are reported on a wet-weight basis, the adipose tissue samples show higher PBB concentrations compared to the serum samples. The workers at the Michigan Chemical plant showed the highest PBB levels, with the production workers showing concentrations 20-fold higher in their adipose tissue compared to the nonproduction workers. One wonders if the health of these people (especially the production workers) has been systematically studied over the last 30 years. The adipose tissue of the entire population of the sate of Michigan was contaminated to a level of 200 ng/g, but because of their relative isolation from the rest of the state, people from the Upper Peninsula were much less contaminated at 15 ng/g. 

We and others have reported a series of studies in ammonium perchlorate production workers who are exposed intermittently to perchlorate, resulting in urine perchlorate values of up to 40 mg daily, and in normal volunteers given 3—3 5 mg perchlorate daily for 2 weeks or 0.5 and 3mg daily for 6 months (Lawrence et al, 2000, 2001 Greer et al., 2002 Gibbs et al., 1998 Braverman et al, 2005, 2006). Thyroid function studies, including serum TSH, thyroxine (T4), free T4, and total triiodothyronine (T3), were not affected by perchlorate exposure in the plant or perchlorate administration to normal volunteers, despite a decrease in the thyroid uptake of at the higher exposures. Despite a mean exposure of 3 years to high levels of perchlorate in the production workers, no abnormalities of the thyroid evaluated by ultrasound were detected compared to a nonexposed local population (Braverman etal., 2005). 

The investigative strategy for a mortality study involves i-dentification of all workers at a location who have been exposed to the product since start-up of the production of the product. Workers who have retired or left employment are traced with the assistance of the Social Security Administration to determine if they are living or deceased. Copies of death certificates are then obtained for all deceased individuals and the causes of death as listed on the death certificates are used to compute death rates. These death rates are then compared to rates in the national population to determine if there are more deaths attributable to a specific cause than one would expect in the national population. 

A control chart of important measures such as costs, materieil usage, volume of production, sales and profit, and an analysis of the capability of the process (if the process is stable) communicates a realistic view of the performance of the process. Without the aid of a control chart and an understanding of the concept of common and special causes of variation, the tools for planning are mistaken for reality or the capability of the process. Workers or other managers are often asked to conform to that reality. If the salesman does not meet the forecast, his performance is unacceptable. When the production worker does not achieve the production standard, his performance is unacceptable. 

Masterbatches are concentrated mixtures of colours and/or additives incorporated into suitable carrier materials. This enables easy incorporation of the selected masterbatch formulation into the production process. Often, masterbatches are used to improve the downtime when changing colour and materials, which improves production efficiency. It is more expensive to buy a masterbatch than an additive. However, the advantages, especially in cases where nmnerous colour changes are required, can quickly repay the cost. For example, carbon black pigment is very fine and incredibly difficult to remove from feed hoppers and mixers (and the production workers ), whereas a black masterbatch containing perhaps 20% black pigment in a carrier material such as low-density polyethylene (LDPE) can be added to the mixture at 1-5%, leaving the hoppers and mixers easy to clean, ready for the next blend. 

An environmental and health impact that a product has must be based on all aspects of creating the product including raw material production, manufacturing/assembly, use/service, and not just end-of-life management (recycling, disposal, etc.), which determines the economic viability of the product system [10]. To account for potential detrimental impacts a product may possess, it is necessary to consider energy and material consumption, emissions to the air and water, toxin levels in the product, worker and user safety, and waste disposal issues [9j. 

However, with the advent of lasers, the teclmique of laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) has probably become the single most popular means of detennining product-state distributions an early example is the work by Zare and co-workers on Ba + FLT (X= F, Cl, Br, I) reactions [25]. Here, a tunable laser excites an electronic transition of one of the products (the BaX product in this example), and the total fluorescence is detected as a... 

With spectroscopic detection of the products, the angular distribution of the products is usually not measured. In principle, spectroscopic detection of the products can be incorporated into a crossed-beam scattering experiment of the type described in section B2.3.2. There have been relatively few examples of such studies because of the great demands on detection sensitivity. The recent work of Keil and co-workers (Dhannasena et al [16]) on the F + H2 reaction, mentioned in section B2.3.3, is an excellent example of the implementation... 

Recently, the state-selective detection of reaction products tluough infrared absorption on vibrational transitions has been achieved and applied to the study of HF products from the F + H2 reaction by Nesbitt and co-workers (Chapman et al [7]). The relatively low sensitivity for direct absorption has been circumvented by the use of a multi-pass absorption arrangement with a narrow-band tunable infrared laser and dual beam differential detection of the incident and transmission beams on matched detectors. A particular advantage of probing the products tluough absorption is that the absolute concentration of the product molecules in a given vibration-rotation state can be detenuined. 

A -(2 2-Diethoxyethyl)anilines are potential precursors of 2,3-unsubstituted indoles. A fair yield of 1-methylindole was obtained by cyclization of N-inethyl-M-(2,2-diethoxyethyl)aniline with BFj, but the procedure failed for indole itself[2], Nordlander and co-workers alkylated anilines with bromo-acetaldehyde diethyl acetal and then converted the products to N-trifliioro-acetyl derivatives[3]. These could be cyclized to l-(trifluoroacetyl)indoles in a mixture of trifluoroacetic acid and trifluoroacetic anhydride. Sundberg and... 

Attempts to characterize polymeric substances had been made, of course, and high molecular weights were indicated, even if they were not too accurate. Early workers tended to be more suspicious of the interpretation of the colliga-tive properties of polymeric solutions than to accept the possibility of high molecular weight compounds. Faraday had already arrived at Cs Hg as the empirical formula of rubber in 1826, and isoprene was identified as the product... 

Specification tests are performed on plant streams once or twice per worker shift, or even more often if necessary, to assure the continuing quahty of the product. The tests are also performed on a sample from an outgoing shipment, and a sample of the shipment is usually retained for checking on possible subsequent contamination. Tests on specialty types of acetone may require sophisticated instmments, eg, mass spectrometry for isotopicaHy labeled acetone. 

Process Requirements. Typical inside dry-bulb temperatures and relative humidities used for preparing, processing, and manufacturing various products, and for storing both raw and finished goods, are Hsted in Table 1. In some instances, the conditions have been compromised for the sake of worker comfort and do not represent the optimum for the product. In others, the conditions Hsted have no effect on the product or process other than to increase worker efficiency. 

Coal, considered a soHd hydrocarbon with a generic formula of CHq g, was explored by numerous workers (24—31) as a feedstock for the production of acetylene. Initially, the motivation for this work was to expand the market for the use of coal in the chemical process industry, and later when it was projected that the cost of ethylene would increase appreciably if pretroleum resources were depleted or constrained. 

H. Batrick and co-workers. Final Report—The Production and Refining of Crude Shale Oil into Military Fuels, AppHed Systems Corp. for Office of Naval Research, Washington, D.C., Aug. 1975. 

Up until 1986 the major use for 2-j -butylphenol was in the production of the herbicide, 2-j -butyl-4,6-dinitrophenol [88-85-7] which was used as a pre- and postemergent herbicide and as a defoHant for potatoes (30). The EPA banned its use in October 1986 based on a European study which showed that workers who came in contact with 2-j -butyl-4,6-dinitrophenol experienced an abnormally high rate of reproduction problems. Erance and the Netherlands followed with a ban in 1991. A significant volume of 2-j -butyl-4,6-dinitrophenol is used worldwide as a polymerization inhibitor in the production of styrene where it is added to the reboiler of the styrene distillation tower to prevent the formation of polystyrene (31). OSBP is used in the Par East as the carbamate derivative, 2-j -butylphenyl-Ai-methylcarbamate [3766-81-2] (BPMC) (32). BPMC is an insecticide used against leaf hoppers which affect the rice fields. 

Early Activities. Historically, quahty was entmsted to the artisan, who was solely responsible for the products made. Thus financial success often rested on product quahty. The industrial revolution replaced this system with one in which product quahty was the result of the combined efforts of a group of factory workers. Quahty was ensured through the combination of worker skills and production supervisor monitoring. 

During the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. companies tried to adopt Japanese improvement techniques, but not the philosophy. Thus quahty circles, ie, problem-solving groups of production workers, were initiated (11,12). When this approach failed to achieve anticipated results, it was replaced by other techniques, such as SPG (13), JIT (14), and ZD. This use of contrasting approaches has been summarized (15). 

In another study of workers exposed to UF, the review of two years of foUow-up medical data on 31 workers who had been exposed to utanium(VI) fluoride and its hydrolysis products following the accidental mpture of a 14-t shipping cylinder in early 1986 indicated that none of the 31 workers sustained any observable health effects from exposure to U even though an exposure limit of 9.6 mg was exceeded by eight of the workers (244). 

Barium metal and most barium compounds are highly poisonous. A notable exception is barium sulfate which is nontoxic because of its extreme iasolubihty ia water. Barium ion acts as a muscle stimulant and can cause death through ventricular fibrillation of the heart. Therefore, care must be taken to avoid contact with open areas of the skin. Workers must wear respirators (of type approved for toxic airborne particles), goggles, gloves, and protective clothing at all times. The toxic barium aluminate residue obtained from barium production is detoxified by reaction with a solution of ferrous sulfate and converted iato nontoxic barium sulfate. According to OSHA standards, the TWA value for Ba and Ba compounds ia air is 0.5 mg/m. ... 

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