Issues Regarding the Safety and Health of Emergency Workers

Details

• Personal Author:
  Kowalski, Kathleen M. ; Vaught C
• Description:
  Emergency personnel, like all workers, carry out their duties within an environment composed of a set of discrete elements. First, there is the emergency itself. Whether a forest fire in France, a tornado in the American Midwest, or a mining disaster in Russia, the emergency imposes certain exigencies upon the responders. Second, a social structure exists with specific social units, rules, and forms of association. An emergency response, therefore, takes place within a context of prescribed behaviors, expectations, and value judgments that are sometimes in conflict with each other. Third, there is a technology that must be understood in order to accomplish group goals. If the technology itself is implicated in the emergency, the entire emergency environment may be impacted. Clearly, a breakdown in any of these elements could result in worker injury and might heighten responder stress. This paper discusses how emergency workers not only get injured but may come to experience burn-out, post-traumatic stress syndrome, or impaired work and family relationships, even though their normal work setting (the emergency) is expected to be 'abnormal'. The authors suggest areas in each of the three environmental elements that deserve further inquiry. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Emergencies Emergency Responders Mass Behavior Occupational Health Safety Workplace
• Keywords:
  Emergency-equipment Emergency-responders Group-behavior Group-dynamics Sociological-factors Sociology Stress Work-analysis Work-environment Worker-health
• Series:
  Mining Publications
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Proceedings
• Place as Subject:
  OSHA Region 3 ; Pennsylvania
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  PRL - Pittsburgh Research Laboratory
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  286-292
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20027461
• Citation:
  Contingency, Emergency, Crisis, and Disaster Management: Defining the Agenda for the Third Millennium. TIEMS'99. Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Conference of the International Emergency Management Society, Delft, Netherlands, June 8-11, 1999. Delft, Netherlands: Delft University of Technology, 1999 Jun; :286-292
• Contact Point Address:
  Pittsburgh Research Laboratory, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Office for Mine Safety and Health Research, 626 Cochrans Mill Road, Pittsburgh, PA, 15236-0070 United States
• Email:
  kek2@cdc.gov
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  1999
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  Contingency, Emergency, Crisis, and Disaster Management: Defining the Agenda for the Third Millennium. TIEMS'99. Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Conference of the International Emergency Management Society, Delft, Netherlands, June 8-11, 1999
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:f8717b552a2126c56beb51fb9adf60bb2e35aa9e151c79e8b9cc13546e8176fc400d76af7327aae9edea3264c6cd0debef6c47465b4eedb0363895fd3f494ba2
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/221022/cdc_221022_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1010.85 KB ]