Health & Safety of Workers

The life of industrial workers is full of risks and hazards. Every year thousands of workers are injured in factories and mines. The injuries may be caused as a result of any unsafe activity, or as a result of some unsafe work conditions or unsafe acts of employees themselves, or defective plant or shop lay out, inadequate ventilation, unsafe and insufficient lighting arrangements, or insufficient space for movement inside the plant. One of the important consequences of all this is increased dangers to human life. Partial disablement, total disablement, death.

• Safety means freedom from the occurrence or risk of injury or loss.

• Industrial safety or employee safety refers to the protection of workers from the danger of industrial accidents.

• Accident is an unplanned and uncontrolled event in which an action and reaction of an object, a substance, a person, or a radiation results in personal injury.

Causes of Accidents:

• Human Causes: Carelessness, daydreaming, intoxication, inability to do the job, or other human deficiency etc.

• Environmental Causes: Tools, equipment, physical plant & general work environment.

Among both these sources, the human factor is more responsible for the vast majority of accidents.

Accident prevention measures include:

• Education

• Skill training

• Engineering

• Protection

• Regulation enforcement as

• Health: A state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. - WHO

• Industrial Health refers to a system of public health and preventive medicine which is applicable to industrial concerns.

Industrial health is: 

i) The prevention and maintenance of physical, mental & social well being of workers in all occupations, 

ii) Prevention among workers of ill health caused by the working conditions, 

iii) Protection of workers in their employment from risks resulting from factors adverse to health and 

iv) Placing and maintenance of the worker in an occupational environment adapted to their physical & psychological equipment.

The basic objective of industrial health is the prevention of disease and injury rather than the cure of disease.