Chapter 16 Health and Safety in the Workplace

Summary

Key Points

• Health and safety in the workplace is crucial for moral, economic, and legal reasons, aiming to prevent harm, reduce costs, and ensure compliance with regulations. 5:28
• Workplace accidents and ill health incur significant direct costs, such as medical bills and equipment repair, and even greater indirect costs, including lost productivity and damaged company reputation. 25:00
• The Occupational Safety and Health Act 2004 (amended 2006) in Trinidad and Tobago mandates legal responsibilities for both employers and employees to ensure a safe working environment. 26:04
• Employers are legally required to provide safe plant and systems of work, proper training, information, supervision, and welfare facilities, extending protection to non-employees affected by their operations. 29:44
• Employees have a legal responsibility to take reasonable care for their own safety and that of others, and to report any identified hazards to their supervisors. 32:45
• Workplace hazards are categorized as physical, mechanical, chemical, biological, psychological, and ergonomic, each with specific potential health effects and routes of entry into the body. 40:02
• The core of health and safety involves identifying hazards (anything with the potential to cause harm), evaluating risks (the likelihood of harm), and implementing control measures to mitigate them. 40:32
• Risk control follows a hierarchy, prioritizing elimination, substitution, engineering controls, and administrative controls before resorting to personal protective equipment (PPE) as a last option. 46:43
• Occupational risk management involves a five-step risk assessment process: identifying hazards, determining who might be harmed, evaluating and controlling risks, recording findings, and regularly reviewing and monitoring the assessment. 60:11