A REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
PRAVIN KUMAR SONKAR ◽  
SOURABH SINGH MAYANK ◽  
SUDHIR MISRA ◽  
AMARJIT SINGH
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Safety ◽  
Occupational Safety And Health ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Worker Safety ◽  
Industrial Safety ◽  
Regulatory Body ◽  
Health Administration ◽  
Fast Tracking ◽  
Safety And Health ◽  
The World

There is legitimate concern over worker safety issues across the world, as well as an international thrust to make the workplace safer. In this context, organizations such as the International Labour Organization and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration have published several important documents that provide guidelines to ensure the maximum safety at work in different environments. Whereas, implementing these international provisions and standards in different countries could be desirable, it should be remembered that the ground realities in terms of existing national standards, local laws and customs, technology levels, and availability of implementation protocols across the world are quite different. Therefore, certain changes will need to be made before such guidelines can be adopted as part of the legal framework in any country. By undertaking a literature survey, this paper reviews some of the existing international conventions and then examines the relevant legislative applications in the Indian context, with an aim to see what would be suitable for India. It was found that the loopholes in laws and lack of regular inspections for various reasons, result in widespread ignorance of occupational safety across different stakeholders. From the study, it is recommended that setting up a national task force and central regulatory body, improvement of awareness levels, streamlining of inspections and audits and fast-tracking legal proceedings would be critical for developing and implementing improved industrial safety standards.

Honoring Eula Bingham: A Memorial Gathering During the Covid-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 104829112199345
Author(s):  
Craig Slatin ◽  
Deborah Weinstock
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Safety ◽  
Hazardous Materials ◽  
Occupational Safety And Health ◽  
Health Administration ◽  
Entire Field ◽  
Safety And Health ◽  
The World ◽  
The Absolute

Eula Bingham, a toxicologist who invigorated the Occupational Safety and Health Administration as its director and set stringent standards to protect workers from hazardous materials, died on 13 June 2020 in Cincinnati. Throughout Dr. Bingham’s long career, she insisted tirelessly that workers had the absolute right to be safe on the job. Her thoughtful and generous wisdom shaped the entire field of occupational safety and health. Her bold and courageous actions prevented countless illnesses and injuries in workers around the world. This article presents the edited transcript from a Virtual Memorial Remembrance of Eula Bingham.

scholarly journals Improving the ACGIH threshold limit value (TLV) process

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 239784731880175
Author(s):  
Carr J Smith ◽  
Thomas A Perfetti
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Safety ◽  
Threshold Limit Value ◽  
Occupational Safety And Health ◽  
Worker Safety ◽  
Health Administration ◽  
Raw Data ◽  
Limit Values ◽  
Limit Value ◽  
Threshold Limit ◽  
Safety And Health

The intent of this manuscript is to elucidate needed improvements in American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) threshold limit value (TLV) deliberations. More broadly, irreproducibility and bias adversely impact the collection, interpretation, statistical analysis, presentation, and reporting of results in many fields. In 2012, Begley and Ellis reported that scientists at Amgen had attempted to confirm published findings related to research topics of possible interest to Amgen. Fifty-three papers were deemed “landmark” studies. The authors were “shocked” when scientific findings were confirmed in only 6 (11%) cases. Many studies have confirmed that the peer-reviewed literature in biomedicine is in the midst of an irreproducibility crisis. Compounding the irreproducibility crisis is the existence of a significant bias against the publication of negative results. In the toxicology setting, negative toxicity test results are infrequently published as compared with reports that a chemical possesses a particular toxicity in a given test. Despite these deficiencies, the ACGIH states that “…the TLV®-CS Committee preferably relies on published, peer reviewed literature available in the public domain.” The primarily academic studies published in the peer-reviewed literature upon which ACGIH relies to determine TLVs rarely report raw data not already statistically transformed that are thus incalculable. In contrast, consideration of unpublished studies funded by industry, the vast majority of which are good laboratory practice-conducted contract lab studies, is only acceptable to ACGIH if the data owner provides the raw data to third parties upon request. This asymmetry in both the source of data emphasized, and inability to independently statistically analyze findings reported in the published academic literature, introduces a strong skew toward reliance on unverifiable although published measurements in the TLV process. Since Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recommends that workplaces rely on ACGIH TLVs and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommended exposure limits rather than older OSHA permissible exposure limit values to optimize worker safety, ACGIH should adopt a more transparent and science-based process.

scholarly journals MANAGEMENT SYSTEM OF OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AT UKRAINIAN ENTERPRISES: INTERNATIONAL AND EUROPEAN DIMENSION

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-53
Author(s):  
Elena Tverytnykova ◽  
Yulia Demidova ◽  
Tatyana Drozdova
Keyword(s):  
Management System ◽  
Occupational Safety ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Safety Management ◽  
Occupational Safety And Health ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Industrial Safety ◽  
Occupational Activity ◽  
Regulatory Documents ◽  
Safety And Health

  Abstract. The international and European experience in creating and improving integrated systems in the field of occupational safety and health on the basis of research regulatory documents of the International Organization for Standardization, European standards, national standards of Ukraine, industry and methodical documents on management of occupational safety and health of oil and gas complex enterprises is overviewed. The implementation features of OHSAS 18001 and ISO 45001 international standards to create an integrated safety management system of professional activity have been studied. The ways of implementing the analyzed requirements in the industry safety standards of occupational activity of oil and gas complex enterprises of Ukraine are considered. A number of hazardous events related to occupational activity at the enterprises: industrial safety, technogenic safety, labour hygiene and safety, ecological safety, psychophysiological safety has been considered and a generalizing scheme of dangers and hazardous events has been created. A model of an integrated management system for occupational safety activities for oil and gas enterprises is proposed based on the involvement of scientific literature, regulatory documents using the structural-logical method, systematization and generalization, and methods of meaningful and comparative analysis. It is proved that the management system, based on the principles of the cyclical model of quality management by E. Deming should include such aspects as: quality and risk management, environmental management, occupational safety management, social responsibility and power management.

Evaluation of the Risk Reduction Effectiveness in OSHA’s Workplace Atmosphere Sampling Activities

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy M. Gernand
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Safety ◽  
Population Distribution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Sector ◽  
Occupational Safety And Health ◽  
Worker Safety ◽  
Health Administration ◽  
Exposure Limit ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Safety And Health

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in the United States is responsible for the promulgation and enforcement of rules to protect and enhance worker safety in most medium and large commercial enterprises. To that end, the agency has collected and processed more than 240,000 atmospheric samples of chemicals and aerosols in a variety of workplaces in the past 30 years. Though the agency spends more than $500 million per year even in the face of increasing overall employment, there exist only targeted evaluations of OSHA sampling activity for specific issues like formaldehyde or silica in the published literature. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of this effort including assessment of the hazard potential distribution of sampled workplace atmospheres for all recorded pollutants over the time period from 1984 to 2011, the budgetary requirements of this activity over time in comparison to the assessed risk, and an evaluation of the probable effectiveness of such activity given changes in US industrial employment over that time period. The effectiveness of the sampling program is assessed according to specific criteria including the probability of detecting exceedances of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommended exposure limit (REL) for individual pollutants, the trend in the overall hazard level of detected atmospheres, the coverage of industries by worker population, and the cost-efficiency of the program in identifying hazardous atmospheres. Special attention is given to lead, toluene, and various mineral- and metal-based particulate matter, which have all seen new rules implemented in the recent past. Findings show that the number of samples per employed person has decreased markedly since the beginning of the study period and become less aligned with the changes in population distribution among US regions, however the probability of detecting a hazardous level of a chemical or aerosol pollutant has increased. Extrapolations of this information and the associated changes in industrial sector employment indicate that US workplace atmospheres are marginally less hazardous at the end of the study period than they were at the beginning.

scholarly journals Analysis of Various Lockout Tagout (LOTO) Devices used in Industrial Safety

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3.12) ◽  
pp. 1329
Author(s):  
Sameer Kumar ◽  
S M.Tauseef
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Safety ◽  
Control Program ◽  
Occupational Safety And Health ◽  
Cnc Machining ◽  
Industrial Safety ◽  
Health Administration ◽  
Energy Control ◽  
Safety And Health ◽  
And Control ◽  
Safety Enhancement

Industries have equipment and processes which use hazardous energies like electrical, chemical, gravity, thermal, hydraulics etc. These hazardous energies are handled with utmost precaution and control of these hazardous energies ensures and enhances Safety. Factories Act-India, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, USA(OSHA) and others have defined a very detailed Hazardous Energy Control Program known as Lockout Tagout(LOTO) where these hazardous energies are controlledThese detailed LOTO procedures requires various LOTO devices to control the hazardous energies. These LOTO devices have many varieties (design, sizes, shapes etc.) based on the application.This paper aims to study various LOTO devices used for controlling various hazardous energies like electrical, mechanical, gravity, chemical, hydraulic, thermal, their specifications, application and limitations on a CNC Machining Centre.This will help in identification and use of most appropriate LOTO device for controlling specific hazardous energies. This can be very efficient in safety enhancement and reduction in safety related incidents.  

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