Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Management
Chapter 7
Safety and Health Standards
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Occupational Health and Safety
The goals of occupational safety and health programs
include to foster a safe and healthy work environment.
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CONSTRUCTION WORKER HEALTH AND SAFETY
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CONSTRUCTION WORKER HEALTH AND SAFETY
Risk Factors in Construction
constantly changing job site environments and
conditions
multiple contractors and subcontractors
high turnover and/or unskilled laborers
constantly changing relationships with other work
groups
diversity of work activities that happen simultaneously
exposures to health hazards, both from their own work
as well as from nearby activities
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Construction Health Hazard Examples
Occupations Potential Health Hazards
cement dermatitis, awkward postures, and heavy
Brick masons
loads
Drywall installers awkward postures, plaster dust, and heavy loads
heavy metals in solder fumes, awkward postures,
Electricians
heavy loads, and asbestos
solvent vapors, toxic metals in pigments, and paint
Painters
additives
Carpet layers knee trauma, awkward postures, glue and glue vapor
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Health Hazards on Construction Sites
Physical hazards
Physical hazards are present in every construction project.These
hazards include noise, heat and cold, radiation, vibration and
barometric pressure. Construction work often must be done in
extreme heat or cold, in windy, rainy, snowy, or foggy weather or at
night. Ionizing and non-ionizing radiation is encountered, as are
extremes of barometric pressure.
The machines that have transformed construction into an increasingly
mechanized activity have also made it increasingly noisy. The sources of
noise are engines of all kinds (e.g., on vehicles, air compressors and
cranes), winches, rivet guns, nail guns, paint guns, pneumatic hammers,
power saws, sanders, routers, planers, explosives and many more. Noise
is present on demolition projects by the very activity of demolition. It
affects not only the person operating a noise-making machine, but all
those close-by and not only causes noise-induced hearing loss, but also
masks other sounds that are important for communication and for safety.
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Health Hazards on Construction Sites
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7.2. Government standards of Safety and Health
The enactment of the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 1970
(the Act) and the establishment of the Occupational Safety and
Health Administration (OSHA) to enforce the Act made workplace
safety and health issues a national priority.
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7.3. Development of self applied
standards:
Voluntary, self applied standards:
The various interests, groups and
individuals engaged in the work of accident
prevention have developed standards
representative of good practice.
Since the purpose is to prevent accidents,
the standards amount to a crystallization of
experience and are accepted and are
observed only by virtue of their practical
value as aids to prevention.
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Development of self applied standards:
The value of uniform detailed standards of
industry wide acceptance for manufactured
products was highlighted by the production
failures of the first world war.
The municipality of conflicting standards
then in use by the various manufactures
proved so serious a hindrance to the large
scale production of military material that by
the time volume production was attained the
war was over.
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Development of self applied standards:
The lesson was a hard one but much good came
of it, for it led to the setting up of machinery for
the development of standards of national
acceptance.
The initiative toward this end was taken in 1918
by five leading engineering societies who joined
forces to form a national organization for the
purpose.
(The American Society of Mechanical
Engineers, The American Society for Testing
Materials, three departments of the federal
government, commerce, war and Navy, formed
the American Engineering Standards Association
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, ASA.) 9/19/2018
Development of self applied standards:
ASA
Boards of Directors
The executive, financial and general administrative functions
Standards Council
Approval of standard based on:
Regularity of procedure in the development of the standard
Adequacy of representation of the committee responsible for the
development of the standard.
The degree of unanimity reached in the committee
The status of the proposed standard
Standards Boards (12 boards)
When standardization activities in a major industrial field are
sufficiently extensive to warrant it, standard boards aid the
standards council.
Library and standards information
Includes a library of approx. 20,000 American and foreign
standards and related material.
ASA headquarters
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7.4. Regulatory Standards
Laws or rules, having the force and
effect of law, have been adopted by
governments for the purpose of securing
the correction of specific hazardous
conditions and setting forth certain
requirements deemed necessary to safety.
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Regulatory Standards
This method necessitates detailed legislation, which involve the
following difficulties:
Legislative enactments are difficult to modify and thus
their detail cannot be kept in accord with the
changing needs of our developing industry.
Occupational hazards are so numerous and varied
that detailed legislation cannot cover them even
reasonably well without becoming impossibly complex.
Such detailed legislation cannot be enforced without
causing hardship in so many instances that it will
largely defeat its purpose.
Securing reasonable uniformity in such detailed
enactments by the legislatures of the various states
and the Federal Congress is a practical
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Regulatory Standards
The process of working out safety
standards by this method involves the
interchange of ideas among individuals
and groups who may not and often do not
have any other opportunity for such
exchanges.
This results almost invariably in fostering
cooperative effort in the interest of safety.
Furthermore, those who aid in the
development of such standards almost
invariably become advocates of their use and
thus their acceptance grows.
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Regulatory Standards
Safety standards, to be worth the effort that is
required to develop them, must not only be
practical, but they must secure a good degree
of acceptance.
If they are developed through the combined
efforts of all interested parties, they will be
practical. But they must be known about and
talked about, that is, adverse, if they are to secure
acceptance.
Safetymen everywhere should take an active
interest in developing and promoting the use of
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suitable safety standards. 9/19/2018
Regulatory Standards
When drafting standards dealing with machinery, such as
elevators, for which the expenses of safeguarding
existing installations in accordance with the applicable
American standard would be unduly heavy, some states
adopt the American standard for installations to be made
after a specified date and relax its requirement reasonably
for existing installations.
Since a large proportion of injuries come from
equipment or machinery common to practically all
industries, most states find it advantageous to deal
with these hazards through standards covering the
equipment rather than the industry.
Standards on transmission machinery guarding,
portable ladders, stairways or powered hand tools fall
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in this class.
7.5. Plant standards
Each plant must have certain production
standards, even though in small, loosely
managed and relatively unorganized
establishments these may exist mostly in the
know-how of the supervisors and their
experienced workmen.