Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this chapter the student should be able to:
• List three reasons for improvements in industrial safety.
• List four important events in the history of the safety movement after 1900.
• Discuss how settlement houses played a part in occupational safety.
• Discuss organized labor’s part in the safety movement.
• List five occupational diseases and their causes.
• List the Three E’s of safety and explain the function of each.
• Identify three important safety organizations and explain their roles in safety.
Key Concepts
Safety and health awareness has a long history. There is evidence of occupational
safety and health efforts as far back as the time of the Egyptian pharaohs. The Code of
Hammurabi, circa 2000 BC, contained clauses that could be interpreted as early
attempts at workers' compensation. There is also evidence of concern for safety and
health during the time of the Romans.
Milestones in the development of the safety movement in the United States include the
following: first recorded safety program in 1892, creation of the Bureau of Mines in
1907, passage of the first effective workers' compensation law in the United States in
1911, and passage of OSHA in 1970. Organized labor has played a crucial role in the
development of the safety movement in the United States. Particularly important was
the work of unions to over-turn anti-labor laws inhibiting safety in the workplace.
Specific health problems associated with the workplace have contributed to the
development of the modem safety and health movement. These problems include lung
diseases in miners, various cancers caused by contact with various industrial chemicals
(benzene), and lung cancer tied to asbestos. Widely used accident prevention
techniques to reduce accidents in the workplace include failure minimization, fail-safe
designs, isolation, lockouts, screening, personal protective equipment, redundancy, and
timed replacements.
Learning Objectives
Upon completing this chapter the student should be able to:
• List the benefits of accident investigations
• List the five leading causes of accidental death in the United States
• List the elements that make up the overall cost of an accident
• List the five leading causes of work deaths in the United States
• List four types of fatigue-producing designs.
• Explain four ways to minimize procedural errors.
• Explain the two-person concept.
• Describe three ways that workers can be involved in safety.
Key Concepts
Accidents are the leading causes of death for persons in their teens and up to age 45.
The cost of accidents in the workplaces of the United States is approximately $150
billion annually. Work accidents are expensive. Besides the fines, management also
incurs costs for safety corrections, medical treatment, survivor benefits, death and burial
costs, plus many other indirect costs. The value of lost production due to accidents can
exceed those listed above.
Most industrial accidents are caused by human error. However, the error is often due as
much to a company’s organization and management as to its workers. It is important to
have a general understanding of how and why accidents occur, how people are affected
by accidents, and how they can be prevented. This understanding should come from
data and facts, not suppositions and bias. There was a long, hard struggle to provide
safeguards to eliminate or reduce accidents and the injuries and damages that result.
The struggle was influenced by two mutually opposing considerations: (1) the costs of
accident prevention, and (2) moral regard for human life and wellbeing.
Errors can be divided into two categories: predictable and random. Predictable errors
are those which experience has shown will occur again if the same conditions exist.
Random errors are non-predictable and cannot be attributed to a specific cause. Many
random errors can be included under a general safeguard, whereas for a predictable
error a specific safeguard may be provided.
Because all hazards cannot be eliminated by design, companies must rely on the safe
work practices of their employees. To ensure safe work practices of their employees,
companies will have to have an effective safety promotion plan. The plan should include
employee participation in safety and safety training.
On the way between our camp and the Gumara River we passed
many villages. In one I saw a leper in an advanced stage of the
disease. Thereupon I made inquiry, and was told that leprosy is very
prevalent throughout Abyssinia. Almost all the maladies that work
havoc among the people could be gradually checked by adequate
medical control under European administration.
On Saturday, January 17, I said good-bye to my two companions,
who started for Debra Tabor at nine in the morning. It was the proper
course to see Ras Gouksha, and thank him personally for allowing
us to travel through his territory, and we desired to obtain from him a
letter of introduction and recommendation to Tecla Haimanot, the
King of Godjam, whose dominions lie on the other side of the lake.
This potentate is named after the most popular, venerated—and
apocryphal—saint in the well-filled Abyssinian calendar. I shall refer
to his miraculous exploits and experiences in another chapter. They
are unequalled by anything to be found in the Golden Legend, and
one can only regret that the late “Thomas Ingoldsby” had never
heard of him.
The emperor, when he is powerful enough to do so, exercises a
suzerainty over the King of Godjam, who served with the Abyssinian
forces at the battle of Adowa. But the difficulties of a suzerainty
unwillingly accepted, are as manifest in Eastern as they were in
Southern Africa, and the country has often been in revolt. For
instance, Consul Plowden wrote that in his day the ruler of Abyssinia,
who was then the Ras of Begemeder, though a titular emperor was
alive,[69] “had been engaged in the siege of a hill-fort in Godjam now
for four years; and another chief in rebellion, after gaining two
battles, had pillaged Gondar, and rendered all communication with
Godjam circuitous or dangerous.”[70] Menelek’s safe-conduct letter is
not valid in Tecla Haimanot’s dominions, and Dr. Stecker, who was
provided with this passport, was refused admission to the country.
The German explorer wished to cross the Blue Nile in the
neighbourhood of Woreb, but was unable to carry out his plan
because the escort officer who had been attached to his party
declined to proceed into Tecla Haimanot’s jurisdiction. The doctor
pointed out, with the logic of his race, that his permit was issued by
the Negus Negesti, and that a mandate from the king of kings was
binding on the ruler of Godjam. The escort officer disregarded logic
after the manner of his kind, and Dr. Stecker failed to cross the river.
He again tried to enter this territory from the north at Wendige, and
was again turned back. A third attempt, which promised well, was
frustrated by the double dealing of Litsch-Abai, Governor of
Wendige, and though the traveller finally received a special permit
from King John himself as Tecla Haimanot’s suzerain, he was unable
to make use of it, except for a few hasty excursions by water from
Korata, for he was summoned back to the Abyssinian court before
he could accomplish the journey in Godjam which he had planned.
[71]
A CASE OE LEPROSY.
See p. 103.