Introduction to Occupational Health & Safety

Usually all personal and professional plans of people are built on the basis of normal flow of events and conditions. Still as practice shows, there is always a risk of something unexpected to happen, in the worst cases these are accidents, which might cause injuries or even more serious consequences for individuals. Thus accidents are characterized as unplanned occurrences, which take place because of movements of individuals or objects, which lead to injuries of individuals or damages of their properties. There is always a percentage of accidents, which happen because of initially unsafe conditions or lack of consideration of all dangerous factors. At the same time not all hazards in the workplace could be identified in advance and correspondingly eliminated in time. This is the reason why accident investigation programs are always in use for creating the databases of critical data. As soon as any accident takes place, these programs are used for collecting of all the necessary information about the accident, which provides the possibility for the future to identify the initial roots of the problem, and subsequently working out of techniques for elimination of such problem. These investigation techniques were united under the name – accident causation theories, the main aim of which is to present the explanations for the reasons of accidents.Introduction to Occupational Health & Safety

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At the same time these theories are useful for identification of possible influence of the hazards upon property losses. Experts comment that the main disadvantage of these theories is the lack of concrete list of instructions for strategic solution of the most of the problems identified, which could be of great use for managers and supervisors. At any rate preventive means for the accidents are rather complex and it is difficult to work them out without clear understanding of the causes of the accidents. Experts and researchers have devoted a lot of time and effort to working out a model or a system for classification of the accident causations, this resulted in appearance of numerous approaches, still none of them is universally acceptable. “Researchers from different fields of science and engineering have been trying to develop a theory of accident causation which will help to identify, isolate and ultimately remove the factors that contribute to or cause accidents.” (Anderson, 1999, p. 32). In order to understand the reason of an accident better, it is important to know its structure. The structure, consisting of three components seems to be a generalized one, it consists of lack of control, basic causes and contributing or immediate factors. Lack of control is related to creating of standards and systems of monitoring of the safety, basic causes answers the question, whether a system was worked out, which could control unsafe acts and conditions. Finally, contributing factors include control of the work conditions, which could secure that an accident doesn’t take place. In case an accident still takes place, one of the obligations of the supervisors is to conduct the investigation of the reasons and causes of this accident. One of the important aspects is understanding of “cause and effect” relation, as accident-causing factors could be eliminated or at least improved before an accident takes place. Taking into consideration that most experts agree that accidents are caused and could be prevented, the study of all the related factors is obligatory for theorists.Introduction to Occupational Health & Safety

One of the most well-known theories is the domino theory by Heinrich. According to this theory an accident is the result of a chain of sequential events, which form a kind of a line of dominoes, which are falling over. It is easy to imagine this process thanks to this metaphoric description, as when on of the dominoes falls, the next one follows it, and then the next one and so on. Under the condition that the key factor is removed, there is a possibility to stop this process from the very beginning and avoid this chain reaction. Heinrich was sure that all incidents are related to unsafe conditions and actions, which he united in his definition “unsafe performance of persons, such as standing under suspended loads … horseplay, and removal of safeguards”; and “mechanical or physical hazards such as unguarded gears … and insufficient light.” (Gambatese, Hinze, 1999, p. 11). There are five dominoes pointed out by the author of the theory, which bear the names of accident causes. They are: fault of person, social environment and ancestry, mechanical or physical hazard or unsafe act, injury and accident. Providing the separate definition for each of them, Heinrich states that they should be eliminated from the sequence. Social environment and ancestry is related to the personality of the concrete worker. The author of the theory is sure that there are some personality traits, which are really undesirable, like for example greed, recklessness, stubbornness, which could be inherited by a person. Also these traits could be the results of the social environment of an individual; in this case inheritance and environment influence the faults of an individual. Sometimes they are called “nurture” and “nature”. The second domino, which was named fault of person, is also related to the personal traits of an individual. Heinrich stated that obtained or inborn qualities, like bad temper, ignorance, recklessness are important for defining of the accident causation. “According to Heinrich, natural or environmental flaws in the worker’s family or life cause these secondary personal defects, which are themselves contributors to Unsafe Acts, or and the existence of Unsafe Conditions.” (Anderson, 1999, p. 48).  Unsafe act or unsafe condition are the names of the third domino and represent the views of the author upon direct reasons of incidents. Heinrich wrote about these factors in the following way: “starting machinery without warning … and absence of rail guards.” (Anderson, 1999, p. 49). These factors played the most important role for general prevention of accidents. Heinrich commented upon the reasons, why individuals usually tend to commit those unsafe acts. This could happen because of improper attitude, lack of knowledge and experience in concrete sphere, physical unsuitability, improper physical or mechanical environments. All these categories he later subdivided into “underlying” and “direct”. It could be explained with the help of an example. A worker commits an unsafe act, the reason he does it is that he is not sure that the appropriate preventive steps are needed and there is nobody to secure enough supervision over the process. The first part belongs thus to a direct cause and the second part is called by Heinrich an underlying cause. Several causes are formed into a combination, which is a part of a chain of events, leading to an accident.Introduction to Occupational Health & Safety

About the accident domino theory Heinrich said “The occurrence of a preventable injury is the natural culmination of a series of events or circumstances which invariably occur in a fixed and logical order.” He defines accidents as, “events such as falls of persons, striking of persons by flying objects are typical accidents that cause injury.” (Gambatese, Hinze, 1999, p. 19). Injuries are common results of accidents; examples of them are cuts, broken bones and so on.  Sometimes the theory of Heinrich is criticized for his attempt to pass all the responsibility for an accident to the employer, still this is not quite true. Heinrich also does his best to underline the role of the managers and supervisors in any work process, as a lot of usual workers do the things, which they are told to do. This means that supervisors stand higher in the frames of their responsibilities and control the elimination of the unsafe conditions, which might potentially lead to an accident. Heinrich insists that each manager should be safety-conscious and provide strict supervision and training for his workers.Introduction to Occupational Health & Safety Another well-known theory is Haddon matrix, which was developed in 1970 by William Haddon, whose task was to control road safety in the United States. Haddon worked out the matrix, which consisted of a table with four columns and three rows. Each row is related to the definition of the timing of an accident, namely – pre-event phase, event phrase, post-event phase. “While designing interventions, factors determining the injury occurrence or predisposing to it, in cases of injury analysis as well as injury prevention, can be depicted at the pre-event phase.” (Haddon, 1984, p. 24). One of the examples of this phase is improving and controlling the brake system of vehicles; speed limits could also be considered belonging to this category. Secondary prevention measures need analysis of the event phase. In vehicles the example this is production of airbags or application of safety belts. Post-event phase is related to securing of corresponding health care. The four columns, mentioned above, received the various names, based on the type of study and injury mechanisms. One of the examples of Haddon matrix for qualitative study of burn injuries in Iran included: human column, agent column, physical environment columns and social environment column. In all concrete cases the names of the columns received different headings. This fact gave the basis for criticism of Haddon’s matrix, because some researchers thought that it was appropriate only for analyzing of single injuries. However, the method, used by Haddon, could be used in a different way – by dividing of a problem into dimensions of time and contributing factors. By doing so specialists have all the chances to use it as “an epidemiological tool and it can also be applied as a practical user-friendly interdisciplinary brainstorming and planning tool to help understand, prepare for, and respond to, a broad range of public health emergencies.” (Haddon, 1984, p. 50). In comparison to the domino theory by Heinrich Haddon’s matrix is more practical, as it allows pointing out the potential preventive strategies, which is utterly important for avoiding of the repetition of accidents in the future.Introduction to Occupational Health & Safety

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At the same time Haddon’s matrix is advantageous in presenting the objectives and key questions for collecting of data. Such methods, as group discussion and circulation of ideas, which are used in the frames of the preventive strategies of the matrix, allow to cover the initially overlook problematic areas and guarantee the completeness of the gathered information. On the one hand Haddon’s matrix allows increasing the clarity of the results and decreasing of clusters overlapping.  One the other hand various users of this matrix would point out different host factors or describe the same host factors in different ways. “With reference to the “Results” section, merging and splitting some cells of Haddon’s matrix, contrary to what researchers expected, was inevitable due to the paucity of information in some cells and the abundance of information in other cells of Haddon’s matrix.” (Haddon, 1984, p. 3).

Overall, the number of accidents, taking place at work places, their consequences for the companies, as well as individual workers, made experts consider various approaches to identifying the ways of grouping of the reasons and other factors with the aim of consequent working out of the preventive strategies and means. Having discussed the two famous models – the domino theory by Heinrich and Haddon’s matrix, it is possible to conclude that both of them are important for accident causation studies, both have strong and weak points, one of the most important advantages of Haddon’s matrix is its contribution to working out of concrete prevention strategies.Introduction to Occupational Health & Safety