Safety Science: Methods to Prevent Incidents and Worker Health Damage at the Workplace

The occupational risk analysis encompasses different types of risk faced by employee’s in the workplace, such as physical, mechanical, chemical, biological and ergonomic. Depends on the type of industry and activities one type of hazard is more frequent than others. During the last decades, many procedures, laws and methods has been applied to reduce the health damage caused by such hazards. Even though, it’s still necessary a high effort to mitigate some of these hazards such as drowning, machinery, ergonomic, obesity and stress. In general terms, fishing, farming, and building are the activities related to the higher number of accidents or health damage. By the other way round, some industry such as Chemical, Oil & Gas and Nuclear are responsible for the worst accident in terms of consequence for employee’s health, environment and society. Therefore, the first step to avoid or mitigate these occupational hazards is to be aware about them in the workplace. Moreover, it’s necessary to implement a systematic occupational risk management with the best methods to mitigate and communicate such risk. This chapter aims to describe the occupational hazards in the workplace as well as the best methods to identify, classify, assess and mitigate such hazards.

The risk analysis methods encompass different types of qualitative and quantitative risk analysis, which is applied during risk assessment in order to support decisions to mitigate the risk whenever it is necessary. Depending on the type of industry the risk requires a systematic risk management, which is supported by risk analysis methods. During recent decades, many procedures, laws and methods have been applying such risk methods. However, substantial effort is still necessary in order to mitigate the industrial risk in some industries such as Transportation, Aerospace, Chemical, Oil & Gas and Nuclear because those are responsible for the worst accidents in terms of consequences for employee’s health, environment and society. Therefore, the first step to avoid or mitigate these risks are to apply a systematic risk analysis to enable identify, analyze, evaluate and mitigate such risks. This chapter describes the best risk analysis methods to support the risk management process.

Quantitative risk analysis encompasses different types of methods to be applied during risk assessment. These include Fault Tree Analysis, Event Tree Analysis, Bow Tie, Safety Integrity Level, and Consequence and Effect Analysis. These methods are principally applied in situations where the level of risk is defined as intolerable by the application of qualitative methods. A quantitative approach is, therefore, required, in order to predict precisely the frequency of hazard occurrence, as well as the consequence and effect of accidents. So that the level of risk can be confirmed, and decisions that will mitigate such intolerable levels of risk to a tolerable level can be taken. Those quantitative methods are based on mathematical constructs such as Bayes theory, statistics, and engineering reliability concepts that are applied to equipment with safety functions. Despite the successful achievements obtained by applying such methods, improvement is still necessary in order that more realistic results in risk assessment can be achieved. Indeed, in many cases, the quantitative risk analysis methods are not fully applied to new projects or to real operational situations due to alleged lack of time and information. This chapter aims to describe the best quantitative risk analysis methods with examples, in order to clarify the advantages of applying such methods in the risk management process.

The consequence and effect analysis addresses to analyze the major accident like a toxic product release, explosion, jet fire, fire ball and BLEVE. Those accident scenarios are first identified and assessed by qualitative risk analysis methods and then quantitative methods are applied to have a more precise assessment.

Indeed, the main objective of consequence and effect analysis is to define the vulnerable are which employees are exposed to such major accident and also define the effect of such accident in employees’ health. In order to perform its required to collect some information from the accident scenario like weather conditions, type of product and their physical and chemical characteristic, the volume and storage conditions. In most of the cases due complexity, such analysis is performed by different software packages. In order to support decisions about risk mitigation to reduce the consequence of major accident the individual risk and societal risk criterion is defined as a baseline to such mitigation action. In addition, based on the consequence and effect analysis, it is also possible to take decision about facilities, location into industrial area as well as location of industrial facilities surrounded by population.

The emergency response is the final defense line in case of a major accident case and it’s also a possibility to mitigate the effects of such major accident. The main input to carry out an effective emergency response plan is the risk analysis. Based on risk analysis results, operational procedures and logistic of the emergency response are defined. Indeed the first step to verify the emergency response plan is to carry out the emergency exercise to train employees on emergency procedures as well as to improve such procedures.

Depends on major accident consequences the emergency response requires a huge response capability which involves more than one company and also local, state and national authorities support.

This chapter aims to discuss the main issues involved in emergency response like communication, emergency response framework functions, and organization integrations as well as giving some examples of different emergency response approaches.

The accident is the worst event in the industry because it causes employee health damage. Depending on consequence effect the accident can be classified as a major accident or minor accidents. Much attention has been driven to avoid the major accident compared with the effort to avoid the minor accident. Despite the severity of a major accident, the minor accident also causes damage to the employee’s health and has been occurring much more frequently in all industries. In order to avoid an accident, the main philosophy is to be preventive and pay attention to incident to avoid that accident happen. That requires full attention to unsafe asset conditions during all lifecycle phases. The incident and accident analysis is carried out by different methods like Ishikawa diagram, Why because diagram, event tree analysis, Fault tree analysis, Bow Tie Analysis. Such methods have different features. What define which is the best method to be applied is the type of accident that in some cases is complex due to different causes combinations and more than one consequence. This chapter aims to describe the incident and accident analysis methods with examples to clarify the drawbacks and advantages of each method.

All over the world, many incident and accident cases involve human error as one of the main causes. The Human factor must always be taken into account in dangerous activities and processes which involves risk with high severe consequences. The human reliability methods are addressed to assess the human performance factors as well as predict the human error probabilities. The methods such as THERP, OAT, ASEP, STAHR, SPAR-H, HEART, BBN support risk assessment as well as maintenance and operational activities in order to avoid human error. Despite the importance of human reliability analysis to mitigate the risk of human error, nowadays such methods are not too much applied in many asset projects or operational phases. This chapter aims to describe the human reliability concepts and methods with examples addressed to incident and accident cases as well as maintenance activities.

In order to face different occupational risk, different industries such as Aerospace, Chemical, Oil and gas, Railways, Nuclear has established standards guidelines. In fact, some of such standard is a guideline for all industries like OHASA 18001 which address the Safety and Occupational Health management or IEC 61508 which address the safety integrity level. By the other way round, the specific standard area applied to risk management in different industries like SCR05 which addresses risk management in oil and gas industry or the nuclear safety case that also focus on risk management. In general terms, all those standards are a good guideline to support safety and occupational management in different industries. Even though, it’s important to have in mind that such standards do not reflect the best practices to mitigate the risk in many cases. Indeed, the companies all over the word must to make all effort to apply the best practices to achieve high effectiveness in their safety and occupational management applying the standards as a baseline. This chapter aims to demonstrate the main standards applied to the most relevant industries in term of risk.

The safety and Occupational Management has been a huge challenge faced for different organizations throughout the world. Indeed the first challenge is to implement the best methods in the different safety subject, such as occupational risk, risk management, accident analysis, human factor analysis, emergency response. The second challenge is to manage such information and activities in order to produce a high effectiveness in Safety and Occupational Health (SOH) Management. This requires an effective management model as well as considering different aspects which impact on Safety and Occupational Health performance, such as safety culture, leadership, organizational learning and safety economic valuation. Those aspects are the pillars of SOH management, which must also be integrated with Integrated Management System and Asset Management. However, all this effort does not achieve their objective if a proper management model support (SOH). Finally, in order to achieve the highest performance in (SOH) the organizations must understand that the main focus of (SOH) are people who works in process and are effected for that.