Occupational Hazards And Prevention Techniques

Construction Hazards

Discuss About The Transactions Royal Society Tropical Medicine.

Construction workers mostly migrant employees are exposed to the risk of accidents from injuries, transportation accidents, and fall from different objects. They are also exposed to chemicals (pesticides, adhesives, solvents, and paints), dust and physical hazards (Teizer et al., 2010).

• While doing welding extreme heat can burn skin, also employees can catch fire as well as electric shock and give bad impact to the eyes. This can be prevented by using safety appliances and protective equipment such as a safety belt, safety shoes, helmet, welder’s mask, gloves, footwear etc.

Angler is exposed to extraordinary climate, UV radiations, glare from the ocean surface, accidents on the board and other psychological problems. It can cause severe occupation problems such as knife wounds while cutting fish or skin diseases because of contact with fish proteins or utilization of rubber gloves, which can cause harm to individual lives (Badjeck et al., 2010).

While fishing workers should wear lightweight garments, non-slip shoes to avoid slipping or cutting yourself on rocky and sharp edges. They should wear a life jacket to avoid injuries. They must serve their motor and boat regularly as all should be managed.

It is considered as the life-threatening operation and most hazardous for the recreational and professional divers. The general occupational hazard of the work environment includes electricity shocks, fire, and noise hazards during the procedure of gas tanks filling in the diving industry.

These divers are trained and well equipped are secured by safety precautions, for example, pairing (existence of another diver for the rescue of task) and access to decompression chambers and modern treatment. There is another gathering of divers called indigenous divers, who are involved by the contractual workers for a collection of live fish, ocean cucumber etc. (Myers, 2010).

Health care is exposed to bacteria, viruses, parasitic specialists such as tuberculosis, Hepatitis B, HIV that are a most vital disease. It is contacting to anesthetic chemicals, disinfectants and radiations.  It involves various pathogens, drug exposures and chemical exposures, which is considered as life threatening and hazardous to individuals (Babcoc et al., 2010).

Workers should be provided with healthcare services such as while came in contact with tuberculosis or HIV, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease is to be given. There should not be a delay in treatment and appropriate care should be given.

Agriculture workers are especially exposed to the extremely hazardous pesticides including soil pests and diseases, which are a severe threat to productivity and sustainability. These pesticides are accessible in the open market without any constraint and anticipated that agriculturists are exposed to various pesticides because of unregulated use (Kirkhorn et al., 2010).

Fishing Hazards

While doing agriculture work irritation in the eyes, allergic reactions, and respiratory diseases such as asthma, chronic disease can cause. This can be prevented by using a nose cover to filter the polluted air. Skin diseases include plant irritants, heat rash, infections from insect can occur among agricultural workers. This can be prevented by wearing defensive clothes.

Ans. There are five-stress management techniques include:

• Meditation
• Exercise
• Time Management
• Muscle relaxation
• Laughter

Meditation leads to a situation of ‘thoughtful awareness’ in which the extreme stress producing activity of the mind is counterbalanced. It can aid people to see new perspectives and develop self-compassion and forgiveness. A few minutes of practice can help anxiety. Those who practice meditation habitually can build flexibility towards stress, boost-up the attitude and reap immediate benefits to reduce the stress.

Exercise is a principal method to prevention, reduction, and compensate for stressors as 20 minutes’ walk, run, swim in between stressful time can give an instant effect immediately. It is useful to refocus attention, let out frustrations and even unites with others.

Time Management is often suggested for managing stress. It should be learning to make the best use of time and plan onwards. A lot of stress can be reduced by make a list of things need to do and prioritize the task (Varvogli and Darviri, 2011).

Muscle relaxation is a beneficial tool for soothing our body when our muscles are tense. This exercise includes tightening each muscle group in the body and holding for 5 seconds, and then progressively releasing and comforting for 10-15 seconds, which brings incredible benefits if it is in daily routine.

Laughter can help relieve some of that tension and improve the situation as when people are stressed, they often hold a lot of stress in their face so they should always smile to relax the whole body boost-up the immune system and lightens anger’s heavy load. Laughter is the best medicine to lower stress hormones and adds zest and joy to life.

Ans. The two types of natural disasters are –

• Fire
• Earthquake

Fire is an avoidable disaster that can cause damage to loss of production, loss of lives and loss of jobs. When connected properly, fire can be one of our extreme allies in the workplace and when it is intense and uncontrollable, it can become nastiest and most feared enemy.

• Use all protections to prevent ignition in the potentially explosive atmosphere.
• Emergency exit should be well stricken with neon-regulation signs.
• Employees should have a list of emergency contact numbers in case of emergency.
• Provide for an employee alarm system throughout the workplace.
• Safeguard that smoke area is accessible and that all workers who smoke on the job are utilizing it (Lau et al., 2010).

It is an unexpected movement of the earth’s crust, which continues for a very short period. It can cause buildings to break down and heavyweight items to fall, property damage, and resulting in injuries, which can happen without warning.

Healthcare Hazards

Prevention from an earthquake in the workplace

• The Employee should put down protected items, such as objects that hang on walls.
• Identify safe places under a heavy desk or table.
• Practice Drop, Cover, them Hold On with co-employees.
• Reflect a retrofit of building to correct an operational issue that makes it vulnerable to collapse during an earthquake.
• If in a high-rise building, imagine fire alarms and sprinklers to go off. Do not use elevators (Zook et al., 2010).

Ans. Severe workplace injuries are too general and there are range of injuries and accidents, which occur across all occupational sectors such as electrical hazards and accidental falls.

For e.g. an appliance, repairperson was electrocuted when testing a faulty washing machine. It appears that wiring in the washing machine has been broken during an earlier attempt at wires. This flaw in the wiring caused the control dial to be stimulated. Contacting the nozzle gave a way to the ground, shocking the technician (Arnold, 2002).

Individuals, who work directly with electricity, including engineers and electricians, are in danger of injury; personnel who work with electrical equipment in the workplace are additionally at risk of damage. It is caused by an improper use of apparatus, electrical outlets, cables and power cords, and electrical equipment.

For e.g. a worker tumbled from a bamboo scaffold to the ground while climbing to somewhere else resulting in fatal damage. Employees working at elevated points, they may be in danger if an accidental fall or even sudden death. It is caused by gravel, shifting of a scaffold, or oil grease and other spilt liquids which cause harm to an individual (Becker, 2013).

References

Arnold, J.L. (2002) Disaster medicine in the 21st century: future hazards, vulnerabilities, and risk. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, 17(1), pp.3-11.

Babcock, H.M., Gemeinhart, N., Jones, M., Dunagan, W.C. and Woeltje, K.F. (2010) Mandatory influenza vaccination of health care workers: translating policy to practice. Clinical infectious diseases, 50(4), pp.459-464.

Badjeck, M.C., Allison, E.H., Halls, A.S. and Dulvy, N.K. (2010) Impacts of climate variability and change on fishery-based livelihoods. Marine policy, 34(3), pp.375-383.

Becker, J.S., Paton, D., Johnston, D.M. and Ronan, K.R. (2013) Salient beliefs about earthquake hazards and household preparedness. Risk analysis, 33(9), pp.1710-1727.

Kirkhorn, S.R., Earle-Richardson, G. and Banks, R.J. (2010) Ergonomic risks and musculoskeletal disorders in production agriculture: recommendations for effective research to practice. Journal of agromedicine, 15(3), pp.281-299.

Lau, C.L., Smythe, L.D., Craig, S.B. and Weinstein, P. (2010) Climate change, flooding, urbanisation and leptospirosis: fuelling the fire? Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 104(10), pp.631-638.

Myers, M.L. (2010) Review of occupational hazards associated with aquaculture. Journal of agromedicine, 15(4), pp.412-426.

Teizer, J., Allread, B.S., Fullerton, C.E. and Hinze, J. (2010) Autonomous pro-active real-time construction worker and equipment operator proximity safety alert system. Automation in construction, 19(5), pp.630-640.

Varvogli, L. and Darviri, C. (2011) Stress Management Techniques: evidence-based procedures that reduce stress and promote health. Health Science Journal, 5(2), p.74.

Zook, M., Graham, M., Shelton, T. and Gorman, S. (2010) Volunteered geographic information and crowdsourcing disaster relief: a case study of the Haitian earthquake. World Medical & Health Policy, 2(2), pp.7-33.