General Duty of Care Concept - Term Paper Example

Name: Number: Institution: Instructor: Date: General duty of care concept The general duty of care concept as enshrined within the Act and the Guidance Material on General Duties of Care, places upon individuals duties and obligations within the work place environment; for the purpose of ensuring their own safety and that of others. This is to prevent any death in the work place, injuries or contracting any illness in connection with their occupation. It should be noted, that the law has undergone some amendments since it took effect in the year 1984. In order to incorporate new forms of work relationships apart from the traditional employer-employee relationship. This has resulted in the creation of new general duties. The Act imposes duties on a host of parties within the workplace arrangement ranging from employers, employees, contactors, principals just to mention a few. Employees are to perform some of these duties, to protect themselves and compliment the duties performed by other parties; to give them safety. Methods used to identify risk compliance or noncompliance in the workplace. A workplace safety inspection is one of the techniques used in appraising an organization’s safety management system. In order to query for potential hazards, and remedy them before they even occur. In this case, a formal inspection centers on a Medical laboratory. Often, the frequency of inspections will depend upon the work activities, accident incidences, staff worries and reported hazards in the workplace. For high-risk work environment such as a medical laboratory, inspection is to be conducted more frequently say once in a month. This inspection will be concerned with how people, machines and procedures relate in this workplace environment. To determine whether predetermined standards are being attained and complied, the inspection will require the input and coordination of a group of people in the organization with each group having a role to play. The groups include the Executive Management Team, Safety and Health Manager, local supervisors, team leaders, the inspection team, safety committee and the laboratory staff. The inspection process is divided into four distinct phases; planning the inspection, the actual inspection and recording of findings, auditing the results and finally reviewing the inspection. The planning phase will point on the areas in the laboratory to be inspected, set up the comprehensive inspection schedule. Then in inspecting and recording, appropriate tools like the Laboratory Inspection Checklist should be available. The inspection and recording phase is focused on determining deviations and what actions must be taken to correct them. It is also tasked with setting these remedial activities in motion when the hazards are identified. Guidance on Carrying out Laboratory Inspection (Hill, 2010) will be a handy toll in this phase. It should be noted that for each hazard identified the inspection team should define it in terms of the description of the problem and its location, the actions required to remedy the hazard, timetable for carrying out the remedial measures and the person tasked with implementing the action. The auditing phase is concerned with referring to the safety inspection report and determining whether the remedial actions are in progress and likewise assess the effectiveness if these actions. Safety inspections have the advantage of giving inspectors a comprehensive view of the hazard problems which are often interdependent thus avoiding a proliferation of inspections and a lack of coordination. Also, the involvement of specialists from the very technical disciplines like engineering in the health and safety inspection allow the inspectors to have a general view of the various aspects of the safety conditions and base their decisions on the quality opinions expressed. Being multi-disciplinary, a safety inspection is costly to the organization although as previously elaborated enriches the whole exercise. It may also present coordination obstacles. Noise exposure standard for an 8hr TWA Standard noise exposure levels for 8 hours TWA sometimes referred to as permissible exposure levels is the hearing threshold levels that national occupational health and safety commission allow employees to be exposed to continually. This exposure level is 85 Db (A) for 8for hr TWA (if no hearing protection is used). Two models exist for estimating the numbers of people potentially exposed to noise level more than the permissible noise level at work. One model closely examines the risk groups basing on particular industries. Examining these models it is estimated that around 12% of the workforce is potentially exposed hazardous noise levels. As reported in BHP Health, Safety and Community Report (2003), BHP Billiton conducted an extensive assessment in the company and found out that that 51% of employees are exposed to hazardous noise levels although exposure levels regulation vary. Unlike the Australian NOHSC national standard, EU Directive on noise recommends the provision of worker information, personal hearing protectors and audiometric health surveillance for exposure levels of 80 db (A). Additionally, it identifies continuous exposure limits of 87 db (A) for 8 hr TWA and maximum peak exposure level of 140 db (C). The main production of Bosire Processing Plant in U.S.A has two crushers (Mali and Saxs) and two rolling mills (Kokoyo and Sata). Being a new processing plant there are currently no installed noise controls in the plant area and its is the desire of mine officials to quickly reduce the sound levels in the plant to comply with the permissible A-weighed noise exposure levels of 90 dB. The study will apply the agreed noise control approach by identifying and quantifying noise sources, developing appropriate engineering and administrative controls and quantifying the extent of the noise reduction attributable to each control alone and in combination. Resources used to research and understand noise sources To identify noise sources, sound levels and sound intensity measurements will be conducted with the machines turned on and off in the process. The sound levels and their measurement locations will be entered into the SSG-SurferTM Software to produce sound level contour mapping of the mill floor area. After additional engineering controls are installed, sound level and sound intensity measurements were taken to quantify post controls noise levels and the effectiveness of the controls. For this study, the sound level will be averaged for at least 12 seconds (time determined using B &K and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) recommendations) at each locations (ANSI, 2001). During these measurements, the Bruel & Kjaer (B&K) 2260 InvestigatorTM will be mounted on a tripod such that the measurement microphone would be 1.43M above the floor (International Organization for Standardization). Since work patterns and employee locations in this facility often changes depending on the events at the mill it appears the employees would be in and out of the noisiest area. However, mine officials indicated that there could be situations when workers could spend a lot of time in the noisiest areas. Sound-level measurements will be conducted at 15 locations, approximately 2M apart on the milling plant floor under full operating conditions both with and without noise controls installed. A spot marking each measurement location will be painted to facilitate repeated measurements at the exact locations. The A- weighted equivalent continuous sound pressure level spectrum will be measured using the B& K InvestigatorTM running Enhanced Sound Analysis Software. Sound intensity measurements will be taken because sound pressure level itself is not sufficient to locate the noise primary noise sources. Sound intensity sources will also be repeated after implementing noise control to determine their effectiveness. The sound level measurement will be conducted under different operating conditions (when one machine is off and the others are on). These measurements will be repeated and the results compared. After identifying the source of the noise source, a set of engineering noise controls will be applied but not before their effectiveness is assessed. To establish the effectiveness of new noise controls, sound measurements with certain machines on and/or off and the under usage of acoustic curtains as proposed by Harris (1998) and sound absorptive material around or near the machines will be conducted and results compared. For the testing phase, acoustic curtains were installed around the Saxs crusher identified as the significant noise contributor. With all the machines on, a sound reduction level was realized in the mill area from the initial range of 100-103 dB (A) to a range of 94-97 dB. Recommendations for noise control. Next for the Kokoyo rolling mill which is also a significant noise contributor, a sound-absorbing material was fitted under it hood and the sound levels with the other control fitted and all the machines on ranged at between 87-90 dB (A). This substantial reduction in noise levels supports the installation of this noise control. Apart from these engineering controls, hearing protective devices should be provided free of charge to employees working in the main mill area. Likewise, they should be taught in how to use these devices correctly. Permanent use of hearing protection devices will result in the perseveration of hearing. Additionally administrative noise controls such as adherence to the recommended work schedule for noisy environments of 12-hour shift which is strictly followed by a day off work. Moreover, a noise policy that will stipulate a purchasing process that will examine among other factors machine noise levels before the machines are procured. Finally, the implementation of a hearing loss prevention program should be started and implemented in the plant. The components of the program are the continual measure of noise exposure over a specific time. Performance of periodic hearing appraisals for those working in main mill area should be checked. Difference between lag and lead performance indicators Performance indicators are a host of measures useful by officers for analyzing and reporting on safety performance from careful consideration of incidents, risks and hazards. In this sense therefore, lag performance indicators dwell on failure data to measure safety performance. Often referred as Negative performance indicators they are normally used along with benchmarks such as the Australian standard 1885.1-1990: Measurement of occupational health and safety performance-describing and reporting occupational injury and diseases which sets out definitions for important measures such as lost time injury rates, lost time injury frequency rates, medical treatment injury, medically treated injury frequency rates and lost workdays. On the other hand, lead performance indicators confirm whether existing risk controls continue to operate on an ongoing basis. Using positive performance indicators provides an ongoing assurance that risks are being adequately controlled. It also provides an early warning of the weaknesses in the control mechanisms thus does away with the unpalatable option of learning from mistakes. A difficulty with lead performance measures is the absence of benchmarks within and across industries. References BHP Billiton. (2003). BHP Billiton Health Safety Environment & Community Report 2003. . Sydney: BHP Billiton. Department of Commerce WA. (2005). General Duty of Care in Australian Workplaces. Guidance on General Duties of Care , pp. 4-5. Hill , R.F. D. (2010). Laboratory Safety for Chemistry Students. New York: John Wiley. Harris, M. C. (1998). Handbook of Acoustical Measurements and Noise Control 3rd Edition. . New York: McGraw Hill. Sadhra,S&Krishna, G. (1990). Occupational Health: Risk Assessment and Management. Sydney: . Standards, Australia. American National Standards Institute (ANSI), 2001, “Specification for Sound Level . Meters,” American National Standard, ANSI S1.41983 (R2001), New York, NY Read More