Evaluating Industrial Accidents - Research Paper Example

Industrial Accidents Name Course title Date Introduction Desire for growth and development calls for human input in all sectors and this can be achieved through individuals engaging in activities that guarantee progress, productivity and sustainability. People are involved in daily activities that differ in level of risks; some have high others have low risks involved. Moreover, any working nation has to overcome the probable risks associated with any activity for achievement of objectives and goals (Walker, 2004). However, safety needs to be addressed and improved to ensure that minimal probability of accidents happening while undertaking various activities. Occurrence of different accidents in the industrial environment show the hazards associated with workplace execution of tasks. They help employer and the employee to understand that both have to play a role in identifying, preventing and reducing chances of occurrence (Blewitt, 2008). Furthermore, with the rapid growth rate of economies, it requires production processes to be swifter to match the market demands for products and services. It calls for increased usage of machines and strategies that sustain the production-consumption process. These demands for modernization of industrial environment and workplace sphere by integrating machines in almost all areas of operations. It raises the risks of accidents occurrence to the workers, public as well as environment. Hence, there is dire need to address industrial accidents at a broader perspective for clear understanding on how to approach the alarming issue (Manning et al., 2011). This paper looks into the industrial accident issue in a deeper perspective to bring clarity on how it can be addressed to ensuring safety is achieved in industrial environment. Background information Industrial accidents can be defined as any occurrence or incident that occurs to alter the form of an individual, property and environment. They can be caused by many factors including spillage of toxic chemicals, explosives, flammable gases, petroleum products, transport-related accidents among other causes. Some accidents are dangerous than other and their effects vary in intensity as some can even cause deaths. Caution and care need to be taken while working so that the rate at which accidents can occur is significantly reduced (Laura, 2012). Depending on the type of workplace it is and operations undertaken within that environment, the type of accidents vary. Therefore, understanding the type of industrial environment helps to understand the level of caution to be taken to avoid occurrences. In addition to the causes mentioned above there are other causes that relate to individual conduct. These causes are such as lack of concentration, taking chances, ignorance, incompetency, forgetfulness and refusal to carefully read instructions among others that are interconnected (Collins & Kearins, 2010). Accident Occurrence Rate Researches show that annually global statistics of approximately 2.2 million deaths are recorded due to work-related issues. About 350,000 of this number die due to accidents while the rest die of illnesses and diseases in the course of executing work-related tasks. Moreover, 264 million cases of minor accidents are reported that lead to individuals’ absence from workplace. The issue is expected to escalate if nothing is done to curb the rate of occurrence (Great Britain, 2010). This will result to losing of skilled and significant resources to organizations as well as reduction of productive population that is important to sustain the increasing global population. However, illnesses and diseases caused by occupational issues are known to claim more people than accidents in industrial working environment. Hence, reducing diseases and accidents will increase sustainability and improve productivity. China and India has the highest number of cases reported while United Kingdom has the lowest fatalities (Hurwitz, Heaslip, & Derek, 2012). In the emerging economies such as South Africa, Indonesia, and Brazil the cases are high although they can be reduced with time if strategies are enforced. These accidents are not majorly in one sector, construction sector in UK records the highest number, and mining sector in China contributes largely (Aggarwal, 2011). Moreover, manufacturing industry in Indonesia and in Poland agricultural sector experiences the highest number of cases reported. Hence, there is need for every country to understand how to counter these occurrences in the implementation of health and safety initiatives. Reports show that poor economies have the highest rate of occurrence because they cannot invest sufficiently in addressing these issues. Most international corporations are addressing the issue with high level of standards to significantly reduce accident cases. The small and local organizations should learn from these international practices and improve the health and safety policies (Martin & Mitra, 2001). Causes of Accidents It is worth noting that the rate of occurrence of the major accidents caused by the malfunctioning of machines, spillage, explosives and collapse of buildings, most accident s happens due to individual mistakes. When a worker is in haste and works without taking caution then there probability of accidents occurring is very high. Being keen and taking required precautions is important in ensuring the working environment is safe and secure. It is advisable that workers take their time to understand the type of tasks they are handling and use the required timeframe to accomplish rather than being hasty and experiencing accidents (Collins & Kearins, 2010). Moreover, there are individuals want to take chances and presume some set rules and safety precautions while executing their tasks and this increases the rate of accident occurrence. For individual safety and team safety to be achieved, it is the responsibility of every individual to ensure that they observe the set safety regulations at workplace environment. Besides, being preoccupied with other issues apart from the task being executed raises probability of accidents. When workers have distractions either from what they are thinking or what is happening around they risk death or being injured. It is of importance that individuals concentrate on what they do so that they can identify any slight possibility of accidents occurrence (Stoner & Wankel, 2010). Furthermore, the attitude workers have towards their jobs is another cause for accidents to happen or to be prevented. Whenever a person has negative attitudes towards what they do or probably they are angry about the assigned tasks, they perform them with absentmindedness and without paying attention and this can result to accidents. Thus, it is necessary to have a positive attitude towards the tasks to be executed because it creates conducive atmosphere for working and concentrating in handling risky tasks. Machines do not determine or work according to the mood of the operator but they follow prescribed instruction and whenever these instructions are overlooked they translate to accidents (Walker, 2004). Moreover, failure to identify hidden hazards can be another reason why accidents occur in industrial environment. Given that environments at workplace keep changing, they introduce probability of accidents to happen. Some of these cases can be unmarked pits, spilled liquids on the floor making it slippery, misplaced items, and low hanging pipes that can cause head injuries. It is expected that workers be observant and ensure that dangerous spots are well labelled so that fellow workers do not experience accidents in those areas (Laura, 2012). Accident Prediction and Prevention In the industrial environment engineers has a role to play in ensuring that the cases reports keep declining to guarantee that set up safety regulations are being implemented. Prediction and prevention of accidents and diseases is among the best practices that engineers can embrace to ensuring that they reduce accidents. Hence, engineers needs to understand their workplace environment so that they can offer assistance to their teams to ensure they are safe and secure. Whenever, the engineers are not conversant with their work environment they become prone to accidents. This can be a major contributor to occurrence of accidents because the probability of identification is significantly low. Hence, understanding the industrial environment setup contributes to ease in identifying probable accidents and devising measures to counter them (Great Britain, 2010). Moreover, it helps to advise the team they lead appropriately on how to maintain and improve safety because they understand the loopholes that can lead to accidents. It also gives ground to advising on what to do before accidents escalates into becoming greater issues. Identifying probability of accidents occurrence and preserving them from occurrence is an effective way to improve safety and security in industrial environment. It is encouraged that engineers establish ways to identify accidents and eliminate them before becoming major challenges. Also, training the teams on how to detect, prevent and handle accidents is necessary so that all individuals in the team can work to minimizing accidents in workplace as improving individual and corporate safety (Aggarwal, 2011). Additionally, engineers can prevent occurrence of accidents by labelling all their workplace clearly so that one can know that every section deals with. There have been cases of accidents caused by inflammable liquids and gases due to lack of labelling and assuming that people are conversant with the dangerous environment. These cases can be reduced by labelling these areas as well as giving advice on what not to do in those areas. Some of these areas have labels discriminating smoking, phone usage and light of fires because they can interfere with processes leading to severe accidents. Likewise, limiting the number of individuals accessing dangerous sections of an organization can reduce probability of accident occurrence. Areas with sensitive and vulnerable products that can easily cause accidents when incorrectly handled should only be accessed by experts. Visitors and new persons should be restricted accessing these areas as a strategy to reduce cases of accidents (Hurwitz, Heaslip, & Derek, 2012). Accidents can also be predicted or prevented by ensuring that correct processes and instructions are followed during execution of tasks in the industrial environment. Following guidelines effectively and undertaking safety precautions reduces the probability of accidents by a greater rate. Avoiding using shortcuts eliminates loopholes that are created when the easy way out is used by workers. For example when buildings are being erected, ensuring that the entire requirement are met reduces chances of collapsing in additional to correct packaging of harmful products reduces chances of accident occurrence (Stoner & Wankel, 2010). Moreover, working without restraining machines, resources and workforce can act as a strategy to predict or prevent accidents. Pressure to achieve set targets and meet goals act as contributor to restraining processes and increase productivity. This greatly increases probability of accident being experienced in industries. Identifying where resources are restrained can help to ensure safety is guaranteed and machines work optimally to produce correspondingly to correct inputs. These are some of the measures to predict and prevent accidents in industrial environments (Hurwitz, Heaslip, & Derek, 2012). Responding to Accidents Occurrence Lastly, hazard management systems can be used in industries to predict or prevent accidents. These systems work to determine effective installations, proper functioning, safe design implementation and standard modifications and operations are undertaken within and outside the organizations. These systems help to ensure that business goals are achieved in accordance to upholding safety, health as well as environmental objectives. This is to reduce any harmful and risky practices that increase risks of survival (Laura, 2012). Moreover, it ensures that progressive improvements are made in areas related to safety, health and environment in an organization this in important so that harmful and unsustainable practices can be eliminated in the production process. The system also helps in breaking down role and responsibilities of every department or team to ensure that there are no conflicts of interest in execution of duties. This seals the loopholes of neglected duties that can increase accidents in additional to giving personal responsibility to individuals in the organization (Manning et al., 2011). Minimizing Accidents in Prone Environments It is important to stress that given accidents are destructive, their occurrence should be minimized at all cost to ensure safety of individuals, property and environment. There are no accidents that are acceptable but there are those that cannot be prevented because they are beyond human prevention measures. Examples of accidents that are beyond human power are earthquakes, landslides, oceanic spillage due to storms and destructive floods (Manning et al., 2011). However, all the preventive measures need to be implemented to ensure that these occurrences are minimized in a bid to address the rate of occurrence as well as in reducing their magnitude. When individuals maintain high standards in execution of duties and tasks, it significantly reduces chances of accidents. In some places like China, USA, Africa and Middle East where there are frequent occurrences of natural calamities, it is hard to eliminate accidents completely. These areas requite engineers to perform development that have the capabilities to withstand such calamities. I believe that we cannot have acceptable accidents but we can work to reducing their intensity in these areas (Great Britain, 2010). Learning and Reducing Mistakes Mistakes are part of effective learning to achieving excellence in any undertaking, therefore mistakes can be made but their frequency should be greatly reduced. When mistakes are made often they create trends that are not sustainable in any manner. They destroy resources, derail progress and affect significantly the rate of development in any area. Hence, mistakes should be minimized at all terms by ensuring that guidelines are followed, correct strategies enforced and safety precautions implemented. This can help to reduce mistakes for improved performance and increased productivity. It is the responsibility of engineers to ensuring that the world they create is safer and the strategies they use in providing solutions have high sustainability rate (Walker, 2004). This is important because it is the right of every human being to live in safe and secure environment. The current world should be safer than the previous environment; individuals should not be struggling with yesteryears challenges. Various engineering arms should work to ensure that the standard of living is improved and sustainability is increased in every sector of life for prolonged human survival. Hence, it is the mandate of every engineer as well as all individuals to ensure that their policies, practices and strategies uphold sustainable health, environmental and safety performance (Stoner & Wankel, 2010). Recommendations There are various recommendations that can be made from understanding this topic so as to ensure the world we are living in is safe and secure. Every human being has right to life and survival in safe environment. It becomes the role of all involved parties in ensuring that world we live in is becoming safe daily. Hence, all individuals especially engineers have the responsibility of ensuring that developments across the world are sustainable. Among the recommendations I will advocate for is that engineers need to be conversant with their practices so that they can be able to determine how safe their practices are. They need to ensure that their strategies to approach solving challenges facing the world adhere to regulations, rules and policies set (Great Britain 2010). Better understanding of different perspectives facing an issue marks the start of solving it sustainably and reducing negative impact it has to environment and humanity. Accidents are reported from many industries and some of the major causes is due to incompetency with work standards. Therefore, practising engineers need to be certified with the relevant bodies in their countries as per the international standards to ensuring that unqualified ones are locked out. This will help to solve the menace of accident in industries. Furthermore, raising awareness of major causes in different fields of operation can help individuals to understand how they can contribute positively towards enhancing safety in the world (Hayes, 2005). Given that ignorance is among the major causes of accidents occurrence, enlightening individuals creates a good approach to reducing accidents. This will help people to work towards avoiding practices and policies that are dangerous to human and environment survival. Finally, governments need to provide guidelines and safety codes to engineers and individuals so that they can act as the standard for sustainable development in various regions. This codes and guidelines should be customized to achieve according to specific regions so that the issues affecting safety of these regions can be addressed effectively. This can help predict and prevent accident as well as improve the safety of workers, public and environment (Bartlett, 2004). Conclusion It can be concluded that throughout the compilation of this report dealing with industrial accidents, I have learn various ways on how and why accidents occur. This will be helpful in sensitizing individuals who are ignorant and reminding others that it’s the mandate of every individual to ensure safety and security is improved in our environments. This will help predict, prevent and reduce accident rates within my areas of operations. Some of the challenges faced in compiling this report is gathering all the information maintaining the highest standard of professionalism in understanding the whole issue. It has been a challenging task but it is worthwhile. Therefore, engineers can work to making the world a better place that guarantees individual safety and corporate environment free from high probability of accident occurrence. References Aggarwal, R. (2011) Developing a Global Mindset: Integrating Demographics, Sustainability, Technology, and Globalization, Journal Of Teaching In International Business, 22(1), Publisher Provided Full Text Searching File, EBSCOhost. Bartlett, A. (2004) Reflections on Sustainability, Population Growth, and the Environment. Renewable Resources Journal 15(4): 6-22. Blewitt, J. (2008). Understanding Sustainable Development. London: Earthscan. ISBN 978-1-84407-454-9. Collins, E., & Kearins, K. (2010), Delivering on Sustainability's Global and Local Orientation, Academy of Management Learning & Education, 9, 3, p. 499, EBSCOhost. Great Britain (2010) Industrial Fatigue Research: The Incidence of Industrial Accidents Upon Individuals with Special Reference to Multiple Occurrence, London: Nabu Press, ISBN 978-1149908563 Hayes, B. (2005) Infrastructure: The Book of Everything For The Industrial Landscape (1st Edition) New York City: Norton, ISBN 978-0393329599. Hurwitz, D., Heaslip, K. & Derek M. (2012) Relating Transportation Systems Management and Operations Strategies to Policy Goals: A Framework for Quantitative Decision Making. Engineering Management Journal 24(3): 32-42. Laura, W. S., (2012), Research and Markets: Sustainability in the Global Construction Industry 2012-2013: A Global CEO Survey, Business Wire, NewsBank, EBSCOhost. Manning, S., Boons, F., Von Hagen, O., & Reinecke, J. (2011) National Contexts Matter: The Co-Evolution of Sustainability Standards in Global Value Chains: Ecological Economics Forthcoming. New York: Prentice Hall. Martin, W. & Mitra, D., (2001) Productivity Growth and Convergence in Agriculture and Manufacturing. Economic Development and Cultural Change 49(2): 403–422 Stoner, J., & Wankel, C. (2010), Global Sustainability as a Business Imperative, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Walker, J.S. (2004) Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective, Berkeley: University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-23940-7. Read More