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Knowledge and practice of Safety Measures before and after structured teaching program among factory workers.

INTRODUCTION

“ Prevention is better than cure” Occupational health is essentially preventive medicine. It is aim at the promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social well being of workers on occupation.

WHO Committee on Occupational Health at its first session in 1950 and revised at its twelfth session in 1995. The definition reads: "Occupational health should aim at: the promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social well-being of workers in all occupations; the prevention amongst workers of departures from health caused by their working conditions; the protection of workers in their employment from risks resulting from factors adverse to health; the placing and maintenance of the worker in an occupational environment adapted to his physiological and psychological capabilities; and, to summarize, the adaptation of work to man and of each man to his job(WHO)

Occupational environment is the sum of external; conditions and influences which prevail at the work and bearing or the health of the working population. The Industrial worker today is placed in a highly complicated as man is becoming more in genius.

Occupational hazards to which workers may be exposed and which may cause various diseases. These hazards are physical hazards, chemical hazards, and biological hazards, mechanical and psycho social hazards.

Common occupational illness observed are allergic skin diseases, allergic drugs disorders, and irritation of eyes with lacrimation, photophobia and conjunctive fractures, injuries, burns, hypertension and peptic ulcer due to psycho social hazards. Long working hours, exposure to excessive heat, low illumination, improper posture, overcrowd working space, continuance sitting in one posture can cause health problems like pain in joints, body ache, fatigue and other muscle-skeletal problems.

In the past,it was customary to think of occupational health entirely in relation to factories and mines; hence the terms “industrial hygiene” or “industrial health” were in vogue. Modern concepts of occupational health now embrace all types of employment including mercantile and commercial enterprises, service trades, forestry and agriculture and includes the subjects of industrial hygiene, industrial diseases, industrial accidents, toxicology in relation to industrial hazards, industrial rehabilitation and occupational psychology. Occupational health in agriculture and ergonomics are relatively new concepts.

Common workplace hazard groups

  • Mechanical hazards include:
By type of agent:
  • Impact force
  • Collisions
  • Falls from height
  • Struck by objects
  • Confined space
  • Slips and trips
  • Falling on a pointed object
  • Compressed air/high pressure fluids (such as cutting fluid)
  • Entanglement
  • Equipment-related injury
By type of damage:
  • Crushing
  • Cutting
  • Friction and abrasion
  • Shearing
  • Stabbing and puncture
  • Other physical hazards:
  • Noise
  • Vibration
  • Lighting
  • Barotrauma (hypobaric/hyperbaric pressure)
  • Ionizing radiation
  • Electricity
  • Asphyxiation
  • Cold stress (hypothermia)
  • Heat stress (hyperthermia)
  • Dehydration (due to sweating)
  • Biological hazards include:
  • Bacteria
  • Virus
  • Fungi
  • Mold
  • Blood-borne pathogens
  • Tuberculosis
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Harry McShane, age 16, 1908. Pulled into machinery in a factory.His arm was ripped off at the shoulder and his leg broken. No compensation paid.
  • Chemical hazards include:
  • Acids
  • Bases
  • Heavy metals
  • Lead
  • Solvents
  • Petroleum
  • Particulates
  • Asbestos and other fine dust/fibrous materials
  • Silica
  • Fumes (noxious gases/vapors)
  • Highly-reactive chemicals
  • Fire, conflagration and explosion hazards:
  • Explosion
  • Deflagration
  • Detonation
  • Conflagration
  • Psychosocial issues include:
  • Work-related stress, whose causal factors include excessive working time and overwork
  • Violence from outside the organization
  • Bullying, which may include emotional, verbal, and sexual harassment
  • Mobbing
  • Burnout
  • Exposure to unhealthy elements during meetings with business associates, e.g. tobacco, uncontrolled alcohol
  • Musculoskeletal disorders, avoided by the employment of good ergonomic design

Occupational health and safety is a discipline with a broad scope involving many specialized fields. In its broadest sense, it should aim at:

  • the promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social well-being of workers in all occupations;
  • the prevention among workers of adverse effects on health caused by their working conditions;
  • the protection of workers in their employment from risks resulting from factors adverse to health;
  • the placing and maintenance of workers in an occupational environment adapted to physical and mental needs;
  • the adaptation of work to humans.

Successful occupational health and safety practice requires the collaboration and participation of both employers and workers in health and safety programs, and involves the consideration of issues relating to occupational medicine, industrial hygiene, toxicology, education, engineering safety, ergonomics, psychology, etc.Occupational health issues are often given less attention than occupational safetyissues because the former are generally more difficult to confront. However, when health is addressed

However, when health is addressed, so is safety, because a healthy workplace is by definition also a safe workplace. The converse, though, may not be true - a so-called safe workplace is not necessarily also a healthy workplace. The important point is that issues of both health and safety must be addressed in every workplace. By and large, the definition of occupational health and safety given above encompasses both health and safety in their broadest contexts

Poor working conditions affect worker health and safety.

Poor working conditions of any type have the potential to affect a worker's health and safety.

Unhealthy or unsafe working conditions are not limited to factories — they can be found anywhere, whether the workplace is indoors or outdoors. For many workers, such as agricultural workers or miners,theworkplace is “outdoors” and can pose many health and safety hazards.

Poor working conditions can also affect the environment workers live in, since the working and living environments are the same for many workers. This means that occupational hazards can have harmful effects on workers, their families, and other people in the community, as well as on the physical environment around the workplace..

Overall, efforts in occupational health and safety must aim to prevent industrial accidents and diseases, and at the same time recognize the connection between worker health and safety, the workplace, and the environment outside the workplace.

NEED FOR THE STUDY

The workplace is a hazardous environment. Many individuals spend one-third of their adult life in hazardous work environments. Global number of workers million (45%) of the total 5 400 million population of the workforce in the world and 58% of the population aged 10 years or more comprise the world’s workforce. If informal work and work at home is taken into consideration the proportion of the working population is even higher.

Some 1 800 million (75%) workers live and work in developing countries and about 600 million (25%) in the industrialized world. By the year 2000 almost 8 out 10 workers will be in the developing world

Occupational health standards of workers and workplaces vary substantially according to economic structure, level of industrialization, developmental status, climatic conditions, and traditions in occupational health and safety. 20-50% of workers may be subject to hazardous exposures at work in industrialized countries and the rate may be even higher in the developing and newly industrialized countries. A lot of people are affected approximately 30-50% of workers report hazardous physical, chemical or biological exposures or overload of unreasonably heavy physical work or ergonomic factors that may be hazardous to health and to working capacity; an equal number of working people report psychological overload at work resulting in stress symptoms.

Lot of accidents diseases individuals spend one-third of their adult life in such hazardous work environments. About 120 million occupational accidents with 200,000 fatalities are estimated to occur annually and some 68-157 million new cases of occupational disease may be caused by various exposures at work

some regions and countries, only 5-10% of workers in developing countries and 20-50% of workers in industrialized countries (with a very few exceptions) have access to occupational health services in spite of an evident need virtually at each place of work.

Theglobal burden of occupational hazards will continue to be major contributes to occupational health through the year 2020 unless significantly greater efforts are made to control them.(WHO)

Occupational hazards cause the premature deaths of millions of people worldwide and result in the ill health of hundreds of millions more each year. Globally, occupational risks have been ranked as the 10th leading cause of morbidity and mortality. The burden of disease from selected occupational risk factors amounts to 1.5% of the global burden in terms of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) lost. Almost 24 million DALYs lost are attributable to these risk factors global deaths. The Asia Pacific Region, an estimated 189 000 deaths annually are attributable to injury related risk factors, 72 000 to work exposure to carcinogens and 71 000 to airborne particulates. These risk factors, plus noise and ergonomic stressors, attributed about 16 million DALYs lost in 2000, about two-third of the DALYs lost globally. Most countries in the Asia Pacific Region are experiencing rapid economic development and workers are exposed to old and new occupational risks ranging from chemical, physical and biological workplace hazards to inadequate ergonomic practices and high psychosocial stress.

Occupational deaths inthe Asia Pacific Region, an estimated 189 000 deaths annually are attributable to injury related risk factors, 72 000 to work exposure to carcinogens and 71 000 to airborne particulates. These risk factors, plus noise and ergonomic stressors, attributed about 16 million DALYs lost in 2000, about two-third of the DALYs lost globally.

Astudy was conducted on occupational hazards of workers employed in various industries by the small size of individual country samples did not allow a comparison of countries within the agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing industry. In construction, there were no major differences in the frequency of problems – minor or serious - caused by lifting, but the degree of problems did vary. Serious problems were most common in Ukraine.

Prevalence of problems caused by lifting in various industries

Fire risk, the third most common safety problem of a serious nature, was most common in the chemical industry, the energy, electricity, gas and water supply industry and in mining and quarrying. In the chemical industry, 61% of the respondents considered fire risk as a problem of some degree - minor or serious - and 32% considered it a serious problem. Fire risk was considered a serious problem more often in the mining and quarrying industry than in the energy, electricity, gas and water supply industry

Prevalence of fire risk in different industries

Mechanical factors and physical and chemical agents are the main problems in manufacturingindustries, while pesticides, heavy physical work, organic dusts, biological factors and accidents are the occupational burdens of agricultural workers. Depending on the country, type of economic activity and enterprise, upto 3040% of workers, and in some high-risk industries more than halfof workers in some countries may be exposed to hazardous physical, chemical, biological or ergonomic factors that seriously exceed the exposurelimits adopted for many industrialized countries. As a consequence,high proportions of workers may show adverse health effectsfrom their workplace exposures.

Recent surveys on psychological stress at work show increasing trends, particularly in industrialized countries. Such hazards have been shown to cause remarkable loss of health, well-being and working capacity and thus to affect the productivity, quality of working life, and economic status of individuals, companies and nations.

Mechanical factors, unshielded machinery, unsafe structures at the workplace and dangerous tools are one of the most prevalent environmental hazards in both industrialized and developing countries and affect the health of a high proportion of the workforce. Hazards caused by traffic in many countries are starting to reach epidemic dimensions. For example, in Europe about 10 million occupational accidents, 25 000 fatalities and almost 150 000 fatal traffic accidents happen every year, a part of them being commuting accidents. There is a growing body of data showing that most accidents are preventable and that relatively simple measures in the work environment, working practices, safety systems and in behavioral and management practices are able to reduce accident rates even in highrisk industries by 50% or more in a relatively short period of time.

Workersmay be exposed to several physical factors such as noise, vibration, ionizing and non-ionizing radiations and microclimatic conditions which are known to affect their health. Between 10% and 30% of the work force in industrialized countries and up to 80% in developing and newly industrialized countries are exposed to such physical factors and in some high-risk sectors such as mining, manufacturing and construction all workers may be affected. Noise-induced hearing loss has been found to be one of the most prevalent occupational diseases in both developing and industrialized countries

Serious problems caused by noise were most common in mining and quarrying, the textiles, clothing and leather, and metal industries. In mining and quarrying, 51% of the respondents considered noise as a serious problem, and 92% as a problem of some degree - minor or serious. In textiles, clothing and leather the corresponding percentages were 38% and 76%, and in metal manufacturing 32% and 83%

Prevalence of problems caused by noise in different industries

Chemical about 100 000 different chemical products are in use in modern work environments and the number is growing constantly. Exposures are most prevalent in industries processing chemicals and metals, in the manufacture of several consumer goods (such as metal products and plastic boats), in the production of textiles and artificial Iibres and in the construction industry. Metal poisoning, solvent damage to the central nervous system and liver, pesticide poisoning, dermal and respiratory allergies, dermatoses, cancers and reproductive disorders are among the health effects of such exposures.

200 biological agents, viruses, bacteria, parasites, fungi, moulds and agents organic dusts have been found to occur in occupational exposures. In the industrialized countries around 15% of workers may be at risk of viral or bacterial infection, allergies and respiratory diseases.

Injuries, diseases and outcomes-The IL0 estimates that there are 120 million occupational accidental injuries and 200 000 occupational fatalities a year worldwide. This means theaverage risk of accidents is 42 per 1000 workers with the risk of fatality at8.30/100 000. 120 million accidental injuries with 200 000 fatalities and 68-157 million cases of occupational disease are estimated to occur among the global workforce annually. In high-risk occupations one-fifth of the workers may annually contract an occupational accident or disease.

Taking the countries of the survey as a whole, the most common problems concerning health hazards were noise, eye strain and dust and fumes. Noise was experienced as a problem of some degree - either minor or serious - in 67% of workplaces surveyed, eye strain in 62% and dust and fumes in 58%. However, dust and fumes were considered as serious problems more often than was eye strain. 24% of the respondents considered noise, 20% dust and fumes and 19% eye strain as serious problems

Prevalence of problems caused by injuries,diseases and out comes

Occupational leading to economical hazards, occupational health and reduced working capacity of workers may cause economic loss up to lO-20% of GNP. According to the World Bank estimate, two thirds of occupationally determined loss of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) could be prevented by occupational health and safety programs.

The Global Plan of Action, which complements the Global Strategy on Occupational Safety and Health developed by the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 2003, will help countries to (1) devise national policy instruments on workers health; (2) protect and promote health in the workplace; (3) improve the performance of and access to occupational health services; (4) provide and communicate evidence for preventive action; and (5) address workers' health through other policies.

There is a need for number of studies show that in the most unfavorable conditions 50-100% of the workers in some hazardous industries may be exposed to levels of chemical, physical or biological factors that exceed the occupational exposure limits applied in the industrialized countries. Because of the numerous problems of health at work and among working people, the need for occupational health is evident in all countries (industrialized, newly industrialized or developing) including the least developed ones.

Humans have used tobacco for 1000 years. Tobacco in its various forms has provided powerful and immediate satisfaction to its users. These gratifications are pharmacological, psychological, emotional and social in nature. Once introduced, its use seldom has been eliminated even by legal or religious prescription.

India is world's third largest tobacco growing country. The liberalization of trade has contributed to a growth in tobacco consumption. Bidi manufacturing is the largest tobacco industry in India. In 1998, a total of 858 billion bidis were sold in India and sales are projected to reach 1031 billion by 2007.

An estimated 100 million people - mostly the poor and illiterate - smoke bidi in India and 200,000 tuberculosis deaths are due to these hand-rolled cigarettes, a health ministry report released here Monday said. The report, for the year 2004-05 and termed as the first analytical, scientific and systematic study on the trend, said bidi smoking was more harmful than cigarette smoking.

The Global Plan of Action on Workers’ Health 2008-2017, the ILO Promotional Framework for Occupational Safety and Health Convention (No. 187, 2006) and the Regional Framework for Action for Occupational Health 2006-2010 provide sufficient parameters to guide the process of initiating action to reduce the health and socioeconomic burden from occupational fatalities and accidents and work-related diseases. In seeking to respond favorably to the Global Plan and the Regional Framework, the participants of the meeting formulated 12 specific actions that should become the focus for the years 2008-2009.(WHO)