Overview of Major Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) Disciplines

Answer

Overview of Major Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) Disciplines

1. Responsibilities for the EHS Discipline

EHS defines the strategies taken by organizations to protect the environment, its employees and the general public from hazards and harm. It outlines the laws, rules, processes and guidelines that promote high standards of safety. The discipline’s main focus is to prevent and reduce health issues, accidents and emergencies at work. In addition, it aims to eliminate or control environmental damage that could reduce effectiveness and productivity of the work place. EHS discipline uses systematic and empirically informed mechanists to prevent accidents and injuries. The discipline is also responsible for supervising and analyzing hazards likely to arise from height falls, heavy machinery, ergonomic hazards and carcinogens exposure. Frumkin (2016) states that the EHS discipline is responsible for developing general rules on safety, advocating for adoption of progressive environmental policies, ensuring hazard communication, supervising dangerous procedures to lower risks of injuries, ensuring safety of workers, promote implementation of regulations and laws on safety, health and environment, develop new laws on health and safety programs and ensure the employees are trained on safety (Jilcha & Kitaw 2016). Additional responsibilities for the EHS discipline include conducting risk assessments at the place of work, facilitating inspection of equipment before use and ensuring that they are properly maintained.

2. Types of Hazards Addressed by the EHS Discipline

EHS discipline prevents multiple types of hazards that could arise at the workplace. They include occupational physical hazards. These hazards are caused by accidents from mechanical equipment. They include cuts, broken body parts and burns among others. Secondly, occupational electrical hazards occur through mishandling of electrical appliances or poor electrical connections which cause electrocution. Third, chemical hazards such as chemical burns, eye splash, skin irritation and inhaling of chemicals could cause injuries or death to the employees. Fourth, biological hazards are caused by bacterial and viral infections. Other hazards addressed by the EHS discipline include ergonomic hazards, environmental hazards, and radiation hazards as well as different types of pollution that could endanger the workplace.

3. How Industrial Hygiene Practices relate to Safety and Health Programs

Industrial hygiene refers to the science of recognizing, anticipating, controlling and evaluating conditions that might endanger employees and people at the workplace by causing illness or injuries. Hygienists use analytical methods and environmental monitoring to detect the extent of exposure to health hazards (Lucchini et al., 2018). They respond to these threats through reengineering of industrial processes, introducing work practice controls and other strategies to alleviate such hazards. There is a strong relationship between industrial hygiene and safety and health programs. First, both disciplines seek to promote worker health. They do this by identifying hazards within the environment and introducing strategies to eliminate and control such threats. Second, they have a similar approach to classifying job hazards. This includes categorizing them as air contaminants, chemical hazards, biological hazards, ergonomics hazards, and physical hazards (Spellman 2017). Third, the two disciplines propose similar approaches to managing hazards at the workplace. This includes proposing worksite analysis, safety and health training, hazard control and prevention and worksite analysis. As a result, both industrial hygiene and EHS concern themselves with safety of the workplace.

4. Relationship between Industrial Hygiene Practices and Environmental Programs

Environment programs are related to industrial hygiene practices in the sense that both provide guidance, policies and training that helps organizations to comply with environmental regulations and laws. Spellman (2017) states that they both concern with promoting environmental best management practices and minimizing of environmental liability and risks. The bottom-line therefore, is that both industrial hygiene and environmental programs promote compliance with legal requirements and foster environmental performance.

5. Types of Control Methods used by the EHS Discipline

Different types of controls have been developed to mitigate the different types of hazards. The most common methods include using personal protective equipment to guard the body and prevent injuries. Protective gear include helmet, goggles, boots, overall, and gloves among others. The second control method is administrative controls (Spellman 2017). This method entails introducing new procedures and rules to alter how employees work. The rules have to enforce safety measures. The third method is engineering controls. They are designed to isolate workers from areas with hazards. Engineering concerns itself with creating structures that safeguard the workspace and making it secure. The fourth method is substitution controls which focus on replacing harmful hazards with the least harmful ones as a way of reducing the magnitude and intensity of threats. This method can be complemented with elimination which is the complete.

6. Organizations Associated with the EHS Discipline

The major organizations involved in EHS include the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA). It has more than 8,500 members (Lellis 2018). It is among the largest association for occupational environmental health and safety (OEHS) and industrial hygiene. The second organization is the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) which is a global association that brings together experts in health and occupational safety. It operates in 80 countries and has more than 38,000 members (Lellis 2018). Third, the National Safety Council (OSH) has the mission of eliminating deaths that could be prevented through education, advocacy, leadership and research. Fourth, World Safety Organization (WSO) concerns itself with safety of employees. It conducts global safety roundtables where its experts and participants exchange knowledge, expertise and experiences on environmental health and safety.