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Historical Perspective and Overview

Safety Movement

  • Has developed steadily since the early 1900’s.
  • Industrial accidents were commonplace in this country.
  • In 1907 over 3,200 people were killed in mining accidents.

Safety Movement

  • Legislation, precedent, and public opinion all favored management.
  • Few protections for workers’ safety.
  • Today working conditions have improved.
  • The current death rate from work-related injuries is less than a third of the rate 50 years ago.

Before the Industrial Revolution

  • Safety & health laws begins in the days of the ancient Babylonians, circa 2000 BC.
  • The code of Hammurabi.
  • Contained clauses dealing with injuries, allowable fees for physicians, and monetary damages assessed against those who injured others.

Before the Industrial Revolution

  • The movement continued with the Egyptian civilization.
  • Rameses II (circa 1500 BC), undertook a major construction project.
  • To be successful, Rameses created an industrial medical service to care for workers.

Before the Industrial Revolution

  • They were required to bathe daily in the Nile, and were given regular medical examinations.
  • Sick workers were isolated.

Before the Industrial Revolution

  • The Romans were also concerned with safety & health.
  • They built aqueducts, sewerage systems, public bathes, latrines, and well-ventilated houses.

Milestones in the Safety Movement

  • 1867 Massachusetts introduces factory inspections.
  • 1868 patent is awarded for the first barrier safeguard.
  • 1869 Pennsylvania passes law requiring two exists from all mines, and the Bureau of labor Statistics is formed.

Milestones in the Safety Movement

  • 1877 Massachusetts passes a law requiring safeguards on hazardous machines, and the Employer’s liability law is passed.
  • 1892 First recorded safety program is established.
  • 1900 Fredrick Taylor conducts first systematic studies of efficiency in manufacturing.

Milestones in the Safety Movement

  • 1907 Bureau of Mines is created by U.S. Department of the Interior.
  • 1908 Concept of workers compensation is introduced in the United States.
  • 1911 Wisconsin passes the first effective workers’ compensation law in the United States.

Milestones in the Safety Movement

  • 1911 New Jersey becomes the first state to uphold a workers compensation law.
  • 1912 First Cooperative Safety Congress meets in Milwaukee.
  • 1913 National Council of Industrial Safety is formed.
  • 1915 NCIS changes its name to National Safety Council.

Milestones in the Safety Movement

  • 1916 Concept of negligent manufacture is established (product liability).
  • 1936 National Silicosis Conference convened by the U.S. secretary of Labor.
  • 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act passes.
  • 1977 Federal Mine Safety Act passes.

Milestones in the Safety Movement

  • 1986 Superfund Amendments & Reauthorization Act passes.
  • 1990 Amended Clean Air Act of 1970 passes.
  • 1996 Total safety management (TSM) concept is introduced.

Milestones in the Safety Movement

  • 2000 U.S. firms begin to pursue ISO 14000 registration for environmental safety management.
  • 2003 Workplace terrorism is an ongoing concern of safety & health professionals.
  • 2007 Safety of older people reentering the workplace becomes an issue.

Tragedies and Change

  • Safety and health tragedies in the workplace have greatly accelerated the pace of the safety movement in the U.S.
  • Three of the most significant were the Hawk’s nest, asbestos, and Bhopal tragedies.

Hawk’s Nest Tragedy

  • The Great Depression was indirectly responsible for the attention given to an occupational disease that came to be known as silicosis.
  • This was a disease that caused lung damage from breathing silica.
  • Showed up on pre-employment physicals resulting from people changing jobs.

Hawk’s Nest Tragedy

  • A company was given a contract to drill a passageway through a mountain in West Virginia.
  • Workers spent as many as 10 hours a day breathing the dust created by the drilling and blasting.
  • This mountain had an unusually high silica content.

Hawk’s Nest Tragedy

  • Silicosis is a disease that normally takes 10 to 30 years to show up in exposed workers.
  • At Hawk’s Nest, workers were dying in as little time as a year.
  • By the time the project was completed, hundreds had died.

Asbestos Menace

  • Once considered a miracle fiber.
  • In 1964, at a conference it was revealed that this material was killing workers.
  • Was first linked to lung cancer and respiratory diseases.
  • Was one of the most widely used materials in the U.S.

Asbestos Menace

  • Found in homes, schools, offices, factories, ships and even in the filters of cigarettes.
  • In the 1970’s and 1980’s, asbestos became a controlled material.

Bhopal Tragedy

  • 1984 Union Carbide Chemical plant in Bhopal, India suffered a major plant failure.
  • Over 40 tons of methyl isocyanate leaked out and killed more than 3,000 people.
  • As many as 50,000 additional people were exposed to the poisonous gas

Bhopal Tragedy

  • The company was accused of criminal negligence, corporate prejudice, and avoidance.
  • Provided incentive for the passage of stricter safety legislation worldwide.
  • In the U.S. led to the passage of the Emergency Planning & Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA)-1986

Role of Organized Labor

  • Worked to overturn anti-labor laws relating to the safety in the workplace.
  • The fellow servant rule - held that employers were not liable for workplace injures that resulted from the negligence of other employees.

Role of Organized Labor

  • Contributory negligence - if the actions of employees contributed to their own injures, the employer was absolved of any liability.
  • Assumption of risk - theory that people who accept a job assume the risks that go with it.

Accident Prevention Programs

  • There are many different types of accident prevention programs - simple to complex.
  • Widely used accident prevention techniques include failure minimization, fail-safe designs, isolation, lockouts, screening, personal protective equipment, redundancy, and timed replacements.

Accident Prevention Programs

  • In the 1800’s employers had little concern for the safety of workers.
  • Between WW I and WW II, industry discovered the connection between quality and safety.
  • During WW II there were severe labor shortages.

Accident Prevention Programs

  • Employers could not afford to lose workers to accidents.
  • This realization created a greater openness towards increasing worker safety.
  • Improved engineering could prevent accidents.
  • Employees were willing to learn and accept safety rules.

Accident Prevention Programs

  • Safety rules could be established and enforced.
  • Financial savings from safety improvement could be reaped by savings in compensation and medical bills,
  • Early safety programs were based on the three E’s of safety - engineering, education, and enforcement.