Commentary: Process Safety: Look Looking Beyond Personal Safety to Address Occupational Hazards and Risks

Details

• Personal Author:
  Wirth, Oliver
• Description:
  Industrial disasters have the potential for grave consequences, not only for the personal well-being of the workers involved, but also for the well-being of the environment and its other inhabitants. Industrial organizations, despite their reliance on advanced engineering feats and highly mechanized or automated operations, are social systems comprised of individuals behaving in service to both organizational and personal interests. I believe the emergence of process safety management as a method for preventing industrial disasters is in part a realization that safety is a behavioral phenomenon. One only needs to peruse the investigation reports from recent high-profile industrial disasters (e.g., Chernobyl, Texas City and Deepwater Horizon) to see that combinations of human error, unsafe actions, poor decision making, and poor safety cultures are invariably cited as major causes (CSB, 2007, 2016; IAEA, 1992). Also evident from these reports is an apparent refocusing of the safety lens from the actions and events most proximal to the incident to include any and all upstream factors in the causal chain of events, such as the actions and decisions of contractors, supervisors, managers, executives, and any other individuals with organizational leadership responsibilities. It is perhaps no coincidence then that the term "accident" as a generic label for occupational safety failures has fallen out of favor among safety experts precisely because such failures are now seen to be wholly preventable (Mathis, 2013). [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Automation Behavior Engineering Manufacturing And Industrial Facilities Occupational Exposure Occupational Health Risk Assessment Risk Factors Safety Workplace
• Keywords:
  Industrial Environment Industrial Exposures Process Control Risk Factors Safety Measures Sociological Factors Work Environment Workers
• ISSN:
  0160-8061
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  OSHA Region 3 ; West Virginia
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  HELD - Health Effects Laboratory Division
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  347-355
• Volume:
  37
• Issue:
  3
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20050652
• Citation:
  J Organ Behav Manage 2017 Jul; 37(3-4):347-355
• Contact Point Address:
  Oliver Wirth, Health Effects Laboratory Division, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 1095 Willowdale Road (Mailstop 4050), Morgantown, WV 26505
• Email:
  owirth@cdc.gov
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2017
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  Journal of Organizational Behavior Management
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:47ca5469cded04d36446afcce59557e126479f5a60521bba577a47b9b85c0ac96be41b4920f027c68060a40d9980f653f6b0f275c93a97647c0f3a716c1044a7
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/210907/cdc_210907_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 943.97 KB ]