Journal of Occupational Accidents最新文献

Leigh, J., Mulder, H.B., Want, G.V., Farnsworth, N.P. and Morgan, G.G., 1990. Personal and environmental factors in coal mining accidents. Journal of Occupational Accidents, 13: 233–250.

Using data from an existing industry wide accident/incident reporting system, this cross-sectional study describes the 16700 non-fatal lost-time accidental injuries that occurred in the N.S.W. coal mining industry in the 2$\text{1}\text{2}$ year period between 1 July 1986 and 31 December 1988. Annual incidence rates in various exposure groups were as follows: underground mine face workers $\text{638}\text{1000}$, underground mine non-face workers$\text{411}\text{1000}$, underground mine surface workers $\text{199}\text{1000}$, open cut mine workers $\text{164}\text{1000}$. Distribution of accidents by age, work experience and occupation of the injured employee, nature of the injury, part of the body injured, type of accident causing the injury, activity undertaken at the time of the accident, type of the shift, time into the shift, agency of the accident, agency of the injury, equipment involved in the accident, place of the accident, compensation cost of the injury and number of lost working days are reported. The relative importance of various environmental and personal factors is discussed.

Hale, A.R., de Loor, M., van Drimmelen, D. and Huppes, G., 1990. Safety standards, risk analysis and decision making on prevention measures: implications of some recent European legislation and standards. Journal of Occupational Accidents, 13: 213–231.

Legislation on industrial safety in many countries contains several different ways of phrasing its requirements: — either as exposure or risk standards which have to be met; — or as specific requirements to apply specified prevention measures — or as general requirements to put into effect measures belonging to ‘the state of the art’ in so far as those can reasonably be required of the employer or designer.

A new approach to European standardisation of machinery safety is in the process of putting forward a standard of good design practice as an umbrella for specific machinery standards, which fits this last approach. In placing a general requirement of good practice on Industry there is an implication that manufacturers and employers should be able to demonstrate that their decisions are based upon sound analysis of risk which they or others have conducted.

The paper presents a discussion of the implications of recent European legislation on machinery safety and of the Dutch Working Environment Law on the structuring of such a systematic approach. Emphasis is placed on the use of standards based on “the state of the art” in prevention. The options open for government to facilitate and influence the decision making steps related to risk assessment are also discussed.

Stout, N., Frommer, M.S. and Harrison, J.E., 1990. Comparison of work-related fatality surveillance in the U.S.A. and Australia. Journal of Occupational Accidents, 13: 195–211.

Recently conducted studies of traumatic work-related fatalities in the U.S.A. and Australia were compared and analyzed in order to identify ways of improving the quality and utility of fatal occupational injury surveillance data at national level. Methodological differences between the two studies are examined, and comparative data are presented. Despite differences in data acquisition methods and in the structure of the labor and work environment, the results of the two studies were remarkably similar. The mean annual rates of fatal injury while working, for persons in the employed civilian labor force during the period 1982–1984, were $\text{5.9}\text{100 000}$ in the U.S.A. and $\text{6.7}\text{100 000}$ in Australia. Because the U.S. data collection method is likely to have underestimated the occurrence of work-related fatalities, the difference between U.S. and Australian rates is probably over-estimated by these figures. The fatality rates for age, sex and employment groups were also similar. Considerations necessary for meaningful comparison of surveillance data from different sources are discussed.

High quality will be of paramount importance for the future in the automotive industry. Quality is a customer-oriented concept and the whole organisation should have a customer-oriented attitude. This implicates the need for efficient information systems to feed back customers' preferences and demands. In the future knowledge about customers' experience of the products through its entire life cycle will be even more important.

Plants should be designed as far as possible so that they are user-friendly, that is, so that errors by operators or maintenance workers or equipment failure does not have serious effects on safety, output or efficiency. Some examples are described. Thus friendly plants contain small or zero inventories of hazardous materials, are simple, with few opportunities for error, easy to control and hard to assemble incorrectly. The action needed for the design of friendly plants is discussed.

Safety considerations are an important part of chemical company's corporate culture. It is now widely understood that safety should be integrated in the total life cycle of chemical and biochemical products and processes.

Hazards of these products and processes are based on material properties. Therefore they can be identified by scientific methods right at the beginning of product life. The most efficient (and generally most economic!) approach is to choose safe chemicals (or microorganisms) and inherently safe reaction conditions. As far as this cannot be achieved, the risk has to be controlled by safety systems (construction, instrumentation, organization).

During the early phase of product life (laboratory, pilot plant) usually the process design changes (e.g., variations in auxilliary materials, reaction conditions). During the whole product life cycle the knowledge of hazards will improve. Therefore systems have to be implemented to monitor these changes and to assess their impact on risk management. These systems must take into account also the “human factors” during design, operation, use and disposal of products and processes.

The principles of integrated safety are successfully used since many years by the Hoechst AG. Important structures to implement this system are guidelines, organizational means and training. The responsible managers in R&D and operations as well as in sales and waste disposal get advice and assistance by safety specialists coming from various disciplines.

The Rapid Transit System in Zürich is a regular, modern train which will be constructed with the most modern safety equipment. Nevertheless, the thought that 100,000 persons a day will gather at one given place, all underground, under houses and rivers was uncomfortable. A team of experts, combining worldwide knowledge on hazard analysis methodologies, specific knowledge from the Swiss Federal Railways and a great deal of imagination produced a detailed catalog of hazards. Train accidents and fires were identified as the major risks. The layout of the whole construction and a lot of specific safety measures were submitted to a careful evaluation, resulting in both an acceptable protection level and an optimal cost/benefit ratio.