Occupational Hygiene and Health

Answer

Occupational Hygiene and Health

A healthy labour force is crucial for sustainable economic and social development on a national, domestic, and global level. Healthy and safety is principally concerned with provision of healthy and safe workplace workforce (Mutawe 2000). According to the International Labour organization (ILO), health and safety during 1950 state that occupational health ought to aim at maintenance and promotion of the highest level of mental, physical, as well as social welfare of workers in all occupations; the prevention amongst employees from dangers resulting from determinant factors adverse to health; the positioning and maintenance of employees within an occupational setting that is adapted to their psychological and physiological capabilities; as well as to summarize the adaption of work to employees (Konijn et al. 2018). Chavan and Shah (2017) note that health and safety is carried out to make sure that dangers to workers’ safety and health are properly managed. To realize this, there is a need to engross interactions between industrial hygiene, occupational medicine, safety engineering, public health, health physics, and chemistry. To this end, this paper will critically appraise the general principles of occupational health and hygiene, including the responsibility of a team led approach.

In order to understand occupational health and safety, consider an industrial/occupational health and safety team of specialists (toxicologists and occupational hygiene medics) who have been asked to determine the chemical composition as well as concentrations of air pollutants within a workplace where workers have been complaining regarding nose, throat, and eye irritation. The team found out that the irritation was as a result of a chemical agent, hydrochloric acid fumes, which were oozing from a container containing hydrochloric acid that was left open in open sunlight near the workplace. According to Alfers et al. (2016), hydrochloric acid changes to hydrochloric acid fumes in the presence of sunlight/heat, and that inhalation of large quantity of such fumes cause intoxication and may ultimately lead to death (Mutawe 2000). To effectively remedy the problem in this condition, the team of specialists decided to determine as well if the exposure to the contaminant (hydrochloric acid fumes) surpassed the permissible exposure limits by the national regulations and standards. If they found out that the problem was as a result of airborne materials (an inference that can be arrived at after consultation with an epidemiologist or physician (Antão et al. 2016), then the team would have the responsibility of selecting techniques that can be employed to eliminate or minimize the exposure either by installing exhaust ventilation around the workplace’s source of air pollutants and isolating the same from the organization’s general workplace (Chavan & Shah 2017). The team will need to conduct follow-up sampling to authenticate or verify that the control techniques that were employed have been effective.

Generally, companies have responsibility for the general health and safety of their employees, right from their warehouse employees to their executive suites. Khandan et al. (2017) assert that keeping workers safety and healthy need knowledge regarding industrial hygiene, which is essentially committed to the “anticipation, recognition, evaluation, communication, and control of ecological stressors within workplaces that may lead to illness, injury, impairment, or even affect the welfare of employees and members of a community” (p. 608). From the case presented above, an occupational health specialist team begins by anticipating that some danger factors surround employees within the workplace. These dangers are listed and possible strategies/techniques of remedying them are installed. Also, at the anticipatory stage, the team tries testing different possible components of workers’ workplace to enable them determine potential hazardous agents. When hazards are detected, they employ different scientific techniques to assess with the intention of identifying and controlling the dangers within workplaces that are associated with hydrochloric acid fumes. Risk evaluation is then carried out so that the short and long term effects of the hazardous agent can be determined. Also, the degree of the hazardous agent’s effect is determined to allow for proper address of the potential dangers that can be realized from the experience (Edgar et al. 2017). This is hinged on the idea that different degrees of effect of a hazard are addressed variedly using different techniques and mechanisms. Through the evaluation, therefore, apt information are obtained for the next stage of occupational hygiene management, with the gathered information communicated immediately to the relevant people like workers, managers, and company owners to keep all informed/aware of whatever is happening.

After hazards are identified and communicated, occupational health specialist team works to eliminate and control such hazards. Edgar et al. (2017) state that the principal reason for observing occupational health and safety within workplaces: ill-health and accidents are substantively costly to organizations (Steemson 2018); when an accident occurs, an organization/employer loses on two grounds: employee absences (which are paid as sick leaves) and increased medical costs (Perrewe et al. 2014). A fatal occurrence can lead to a delay in completion of a project. It can equally create a negative publicity and also impact on the employment bond as well as outsourcing.

Clearly, occupational health is a multifaceted activity that is founded on four main principles. First, occupational health is aimed at protecting and promoting workers’ health by regulating/managing and preventing occupational accidents and diseases by removing occupational determining factors as well as conditions that are hazardous to safety and health at workplace (Khandan et al. 2017). Secondly, it is based on the principle that there is a need to develop and promote safe and healthy workplace, work, and work organizations. Thirdly, it is aimed at enhancement of mental, social, and physical welfare of employees as well as support for the maintenance and development of their working capacity, along with social and professional development at work. The last occupational health principle is that organizations should enable employees to conduct economically and socially productive lives as well as to positively contribute to sustainable development.

Occupational health and safety, as seen in the provided case, functions to provide information and data that can backup, remedy, or prevent the challenges that are involved in the presence of actual health risk on a worker while working within designated workplaces (Alfers et al. 2016). Occupational health and safety aims at minimizing the likelihood that employees’ health will be impacted by work (Antão et al. 2016). Equally, Khandan et al. (2017) reason that since the occupational health and safety hygiene discipline has grown over time, amassing large volumes of information regarding occupational health and safety, a company needs to select which the protocols and systems of industrial hygiene they ought to use, opting for course of action appropriate within the firm’s particular type of business along with the operations that is involved within it (Perrewe et al. 2014). Similarly, occupational health and safety serves to give an avenue wherein studies and researches can be done to help in the identification and validation of previously undetected dangers. New protective equipment like materials for disinfection, materials for wearing, and protection against contamination from unnoticed/undetected objects that pose danger to health storage systems, cleaning systems, reduction and impact apparatus as well as other associated new items  are developed, validated, tested for ability and efficiency to stave off impacts of health hazards inside workplaces (Konijn et al. 2018). To optimize these elements of occupational hygiene via “anticipation, recognition, evaluation, communication, and control of ecological stressors” by comprehensively monitoring and evaluating hazards to engineer solutions with the aim of reducing those hazards will serve to assist to regulate/control potential health dangers that affect both an organization and its employees. Comprehending the occupational health principles will assist in controlling factors in more effective and efficient ways, and therefore, have more productive workplaces.

To meet occupational hygiene, Edgar et al. (2017) note that organizations should install an approach that combines training of its employees and their surroundings, medical surveillance, ergonomic job design, a corporate organization that stresses and promotes safety, and competent supervisor. An organization, according to Steemson (2018), out to put safety production at its very baseline. Nonetheless, occupational health and safety issues are in most cases given less attention with companies only minding the amount of revenue they earn from their employees’ productivity at the expense of the employees’ health and safety.

To sum it up, using the case discussed, hazardous agents can cause considerable losses to companies and thus need to be eliminated by all means. Using the anticipating, recognizing, evaluating and controlling principles, this paper has vividly discussed the process of remedying the hydrochloric gas fumes within the workplace, underpinning the need for each and every principle. In doing this, the paper also brought out the role that was played by a team of occupational specialists and toxicologists in dealing with hazards within an organization.