Industrial hygiene

Answer

The OSH Act and Industrial Hygiene

Industrial hygiene and safety are the major reasons why the OSH Act was enacted and passed. The law, passed in 1970, aimed at formulating workplace standards that were to ensure that employees were protected from the work hazards that could contribute to the compromise in their safety and their health. With the passage of the Act, a number of organizations were created to ensure a seamless implementation of its ideals which included the safety of the worker at the workplace (Johnson, 2020). such organizations include the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) and the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA). This paper compares the missions of these four organizations and assesses their influence on industrial hygiene. It also focuses on OSHA, detailing how the passing of the OSH Act aided in its creation and ends with stating its major contribution to industrial hygiene.

Comparison of Mission and Influence

The main mission of OSHA in its creation was to ensure that there existed safe and healthful working conditions for the working class through the creation and implementation of safety standards and also through the provision of training, outreach, education and possibly even assistance to these corporations. AS part of the Department of Health and Human Services, NIOSH is an agency that was created to conduct research and offer recommendations for the prevention of illness and injury related to work. Under the authorization of the OSH Act, this body tests, approves and certifies workplace programs that aim at making the working environment safer (Johnson, 2020). The ACGIH is a private association of occupational hygiene and related professionals whose main aim is to promote the protection of workers exposed to environmental risk factors. The OSH Act provided for the establishment of such a body to develop exposure indexes for chemical substances, physical agents and biological agents. Such indexes are applied internationally. AIHA is an international non-profit organization whose role is to advance global health through locally driven interventions. The body strengthens health systems and workforce capacity worldwide through locally driven peer-to-peer partnerships.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) 

In the wake of the passage of the OSH Act of 1970, it was mandated the the Occupational Safety and Health Administration be established to implement  the mission of ensuring that the workplace was safe and healthy through the creation and application of safety standards. The Act mandated that this body would make sure this was effectively done not only through these statutory developments but also through training, outreach, education and assistance where necessary to implement the safety strategies (Duda, 2019). Consequently, OSHA was established and today issues standards for a wide variety of workplace hazards ranging from General Industry, Construction, Maritime to Agriculture.

OSHA and the regulatory framework it provides has made a number of notable contribution to worker safety and profitability of companies over time. The provision of safe working environments has created a culture of increased worker productivity and happiness. The simplest way to lower productivity is to forget about worker safety and expose one’s workers to varied levels of physical hazards. The implementation of the safety standards keeps the employees at work because there are fewer chances that they will get sick or injured (Duda, 2019). In this regard then, OSHA has made sure that there are protections in place from the legal ramifications when lawsuits are filed meant to incriminate companies for failure to comply with safety standards. When the company has been given an all-clear by the inspection teams in recent times, it would be difficult to incriminate them and charge for negligence. So in as a much as the body has protected workers the most, it has also reduced the legal burden that employers would have suffered through failure to adhere to safety regulations at work.

In conclusion, the OSH Act of 1970 set standards for the establishment of various bodies to police industrial hygiene and safety. The OSHA, NIOSH, ACGIH and AIHA are some of the federal, private and professional bodies that were established to make sure that the intention of worker protection was attained. OSHA sets standards that various employers have to attain to satisfy the goal of worker safety. It protects both workers and employees from the health and legal ramifications respectively.