Preface
Introduction In the past (and even to a degree in the present), very little discussion took place or was emphasized on industrial worker safety and health—and even less emphasis was placed on developing a consciousness for worker safety and health as an integral part of industrial operations. This trend has been changing, however—as it should. One of the most significant changes has taken place in colleges and universities. Safety and environmental health and other safety-related courses and curriculums have been added to the pertinent fields of study, where occupational safety and health has been approached as a science with well-defined goals and objectives, not as an exercise in lip service and sloganeering. With the new demands for maintaining a violence-free workplace and in compliance with Homeland Security requirements, the demand, in many cases, for highly trained occupational safety and health professionals has also increased. Still, a problem exists. Many of these relatively recent training courses and curriculums have focused on the purely theoretical and scientific aspects of safety, health, and related topics. You want proof? Hire a recent graduate from one of these programs. Hiring a highly educated safety and health graduate who is well grounded in logic and logic systems such as Boolean algebra, systems analysis, and design for safety is not unusual—however, this same student may be lacking in what is really required: a fundamental grounding in the concepts of real-world safety and health practice. In other words, a real gap exists between what our undergraduate and graduate students are typically taught, and in what is really required in the work world—the real world. What is really required is a combination of education and common sense delivered in a simplified approach to problem solving. Occupational Safety and Health Simplified for the Industrial Workplace is designed to help fill this gap. This text is based on more than 50 years of occupational and safety health practice where mistakes were made and proper actions were taken, and learning resulted from both. Clearly written in everyday English with an understandable, accessible, and direct and conversational style, this text provides easy access to a wealth of practical and substantial information. It emphasizes developing a consciousness for instituting safe work practices and maintenance of good health as an integral part of industrial work practice, and also addresses industry’s responsibility to curtail workplace violence and to incorporate clear communication with non-English speaking employees. The principles in this book (if conscientiously applied) can prevent the devastating effects of improper or unsafe practices in the creation and delivery of work outputs and work activities. Before we proceed with discussing the nuts and bolts of the occupational safety and health profession it is important to issue a word of caution to the reader and to anyone who has ambitions to become an occupational safety and health practitioner: although this book can be used as a how-to-do-it guide—a kind of cookbook of recipes on how to mix and blend various regulations, standards, common safety and health work practices, and simply doing the right thing to protect industrial workers from on-the-job hazards and toxic exposures—the success of mixing and blending these ingredients to cook positive results requires the occupational safety and health professional to possess a strong will combined with a great deal of fortitude and persistence. Why? You might think that workers (and others) will automatically do all that needs to be done to protect their own personal safety and health. And to a point this is usually the case. However, complying with safety and health rules and regulations is not always easy; it can be very uncomfortable. For example, when it comes to wearing clumsy safety shoes, or using uncomfortable safety glasses, or donning a heavy hard-hat, or putting on some other type of unwanted and uncomfortable personal protective gear, some workers will simply not use this protective equipment. Or, in another example of workers' failure to abide by established safety and health rules or regulations: a worker may fall back on that natural human tendency—the tendency to always look for the easy way of accomplishing certain work tasks. That is, many of us have the tendency to bypass safety rules and/or devices to finish a task quickly and with as little effort as needed. Unfortunately, bypassing safety and health rules for convenience has led to many injurious and fatal consequences too lengthy to list in any text. Throughout this book, the focus is placed on the need for professionalism, scientific analysis of risks and safety measures, concern for human and environmental needs, and real-world examples of effective occupational safety and health management. Materials included within the text include pertinent terminology and information, case studies, and sections on management aspects; Hispanic outreach; indoor air quality; thermal stress; security and vulnerability assessment; preventing workplace violence; and much more. Frank R. Spellman Norfolk, Virginia