Global and Environmental Health Issues

Health and safety legislation entails the employers to go through the risk assessments and accentuates the requirement for adapting the work to the employees. The employers are obligated to be in tenure of an evaluation regarding the risks to safety as well as health at work. This encompasses of those workers that are more likely to be exposed towards risks at work places (Jonathan & Mbogo, 2016). It is very important to protect those sensitive risk groups against the hazards that explicitly affect them. Diversity and the management of diversity at workplace are the most occurred issue in health and safety in this era. However, diversity has seldom been studied from the perspective of risk assessment. Tools used for practical risk assessment take into account the particular risks that are faced by them. The given context highlights the requirements for carrying out the comprehensive risk assessment, to focus on the diversified workforce during the assessment and management of risks (Adeyemo & Smallwood, 2017).

To reduce the risk of health hazard, health and safety management plan is a way to curb this problem. There are generally six essential steps involves in good health and safety programs and they are: Identification, Source, Measurement, Evaluation, Mitigation, and Monitor. Identification is done to identify the potential risks; source is for tracing the root cause; measurement is done to measure the risk methodologically, evaluating the risk response, mitigating the identified gap, and monitoring the whole process (Rout & Sikdar, 2017).

Risk management plan is an important process as it helps in empowering an organization with the obligatory tools. Such tools help in identifying the potential risk. Once the managing team is able to identify the potential risks related to the workforce they can easily alleviate it. However, Risk management and risk assessment is the best plan of action to make a way to growth and progress (Ahmadi-Javid & Gemünden, 2020).

A risk assessment should be done to make sure that the established safe working exercises should be continued to be implemented and all the safety instructions given by the risk assessment managers are respected and followed by the supervisors as well as the line managers. Developing a healthy workplace program by taking risk assessment and management in consideration act as a key step in protecting the workers as well as the whole organization from potential health hazards and will help in the provision of health and safety (Madarsara, Yari, & Saedabadi, 2019).

Comprehensive risk assessment must be done in a way that it involves the workers that are concerned with it and on the basis of the examination of the actual work situation. The implementation of the interconnected measures such as adapting the work to the individual, providing suitable instructions to the workers, adapting to the technical improvement, provision of specific training are the key success factor. The risk assessment that is potential in eliminating the risks and tackles hazards at source specified for the categories of workers that are at high risk will benefit all workers irrespective of the age, nationality, and gender. Recommendations of the measures that can potentially benefit the whole workforce includes the provision of information related to the health and safety in accessible formats, mounting modifications at the workstations for accommodating the disabled or older workers along with implementing ergonomic implements and instruments that can potentially be tailored as per each of the worker regardless of their age, nationality, and gender (Ahmadi-Javid & Gemünden, 2020).

Here, the vulnerable populations are the group of labours working in a petro-chemical industry that have been assessed for the completion of this assessment. They are the group of those individuals that are racial and ethnic minorities, economically disadvantaged, have low-income, some of them are homeless, rural residents, suffering from mental stress, chronic health conditions or those that are immune-compromised or have human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It may also include people who often come across barriers from accessing the healthcare services. The vulnerability of the population is often increased by the ethnicity, race, sex, age, and other factors such as insurance coverage, income, or lack of a general source of care (Patrick, Flegel & Stanbrook, 2018).

It has been seen that workplace hazards could be physical, psychosocial, or even work organization based (Wahlin et al, 2018). Various chemical substances along with the biologic hazards have been found at workplaces all over. The control of disease that are caused at the work places mainly focuses on three major groups of hazards and they are Physical, Chemical, and Biological.

  • Physical hazards: These hazards include heat, noise, ionizing as well as non-ionizing radiations, cold, and stressors like vibrations. Although, these hazards potentially causes hearing loss, cardiovascular disease, and even cancer (El-Sallamy et al, 2017).
  • Chemical hazards: These hazards include pesticides (regular exposure to the pesticides potentially causes permanent neurological disorders), organic solvents (they are potent liver toxins and often cause leukemia, neuropathy, and heart diseases), heavy metals (extremely toxic and often cause cardiovascular disease, renal diseases, and cancers), fibrogenic dusts (lethal dust and can cause lung scarring and cancer), plastics and other reactive chemicals (Huss et al, 2018).
  • Biologic hazards: Biologic hazards encompass both infectious as well as the allergenic microbes. There are certain highly allergenic plants or animal products e.g., latex rubber, present at workplaces and the workers are often exposed to them that increases the risk of the health hazards (Huss et al, 2018).

References for Health and Safety at Work Place

Adeyemo, O. & Smallwood, J. (2017). Impact of occupational health and safety legislation on performance improvement in the nigerian construction industry. Proceedia Engineering, 196, 785-791. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2017.08.008

Ahmadi-Javid, A., Fateminia, S. H., & Gemünden, H. G. (2020). A method for risk response planning in project portfolio management. Project Management Journal, 51(1), 77–95. https://doi.org/10.1177/8756972819866577

El-Sallamy, R. M., Kabbash, I.A., El-Fatah, S. A., El-Feky, A. (2018). Physical hazard safety awareness among healthcare workers in Tanta university hospitals, Egypt. Environmental Science and Pollution Research International. 25(31):30826-30838. doi: 10.1007/s11356-017-9110-6.

Huss, A., Cochrane, R., Jones, C., & Atungulu, G. G. (2018). Physical and Chemical methods for the reduction of biological hazards in animal feeds. Food and Feed Safety Systems and Analysis, 83–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811835-1.00005-1

Jonathan, G. K. & Mbogo, R. W. (2016). Maintaining health and safety at workplace: employee and employer’s role in ensuring a safe working environment. Journal of Education and Practice, 7(29).

Madarsara, T. J., Yari, S., & Saedabadi, H. (2019). Health and safety risk assessment using a combined FMEA and JSA method in a manufacturing company. Asian Pacific Journal of Environment and Cancer, 2(1), 63-68.

Patrick, K., Flegel, K., & Stanbrook, M. B. (2018). Vulnerable populations: an area CMAJ will continue to champion. CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal, 190(11), E307. https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.180288

Rout, B. K. & Sikdar, B. (2017). Hazard identification, risk assessment, and control measures as an effective tool of occupational health assessment of hazardous process in an iron ore pelletizing industry. Indian Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, 21(2), 56-76. doi: 10.4103/ijoem.IJOEM_19_16

Wahlin, C., Kvarnstrom, S., Ohrn, A. & Strid, E. N. (2018). Patient and healthcare worker safety risks and injuries. Learning from incident reporting. European Journal of Physiotherapy, 22(1), 44-50. https://doi.org/10.1080/21679169.2018.1549594

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