BPA32202 : OCCUPATIONAL & ENVIRONMENTAL

HEALTH

THE SAFETY AND HEALTH MOVEMENT

– Historical Perspective

Sr. Dr. Mohd Hafizal B Ishak

Dept. Real Estate Management
Fac. of Technology Management
and Business
UTHM
DEVELOPMENTS BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION
• Understanding the past can help safety & health
professionals examine the present and future
with a sense of perspective and continuity.

• Modern developments in health & safety are part

of the long continuum of developments.
• Beginning in the days of the ancient Babylonians.

• Circa 2000 BC, their ruler developed his Code of Hammurabi,

which encompassed all the laws of
the land at that time.
• Showed Hammurabi to be a just ruler, and set a
precedent followed by other Mesopotamian kings.
 DEVELOPMENTS BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION

• Significance of the code from the perspective of safety & health are
clauses dealing with injuries.
• Allowable fees for physicians & monetary damages assessed against
those who injured others.

• Later emerged in the industrious Egyptian civilization.

• Much labor was provided by slaves & slaves were
not treated well—unless it suited the needs of
Egyptian taskmasters.
 DEVELOPMENTS BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION

• To ensure maintenance of a workforce to build a huge temple

bearing his name, Rameses II created an industrial medical service
to care for the workers.
• They were required to bathe daily in the Nile and given regular medical
examinations, & sick workers isolated.

• The Romans were vitally concerned with safety & health, as seen
from their construction projects.
• Aqueducts, sewerage systems, public baths, latrines,
and well-ventilated houses.
DEVELOPMENTS BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION
• In 1567, Philippus Aureolus produced a treatise
on the pulmonary diseases of miners.
• Covered diseases of smelter workers & metallurgists.
• Diseases associated with handling/exposure to mercury.

• Around the same time, Georgius Agricola published De

Re Metallica, emphasizing need for ventilation in mines,
showing devices to bring fresh air into mines.

• The eighteenth century saw Bernardino Ramazzini, who

wrote Discourse on the Diseases of Workers.
• Drew conclusive parallels between diseases suffered
by workers and their occupations.
DEVELOPMENTS BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION

• The Industrial Revolution changed forever the methods

of producing goods, summarized as:

• Introduction of inanimate power (i.e., steam power) to

replace people and animal power.
• Substitution of machines for people.
• Introduction of new methods for converting raw
materials.
• Organization/specialization of work, resulting in a
division of labor.
DEVELOPMENTS BEFORE THE INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION
• These changes necessitated a greater focusing of attention on
the safety and health of workers.

• Steam power increased markedly the potential for

life-threatening injuries, as did machines.
• The new methods used for converting raw materials
also introduced new risks of injuries and diseases.
• Specialization, by increasing the likelihood of boredom
and inattentiveness, also made the workplace a more
dangerous environment.
MILESTONES IN THE SAFETY MOVEMENT

• The safety movement traces its roots to England.

• In the Industrial Revolution, child labor in factories was

common.
• Hours were long, work hard, and conditions often unhealthy
& unsafe.
MILESTONES IN THE SAFETY MOVEMENT

• After an outbreak of fever among children working

in their cotton mills, people of Manchester, England,
demanded better factory working conditions.

• In 1802 the Health & Morals of Apprentices Act

passed.
• Marked the beginning of governmental involvement in
workplace safety.
TRAGEDIES THAT HAVE CHANGED THE
SAFETY MOVEMENT
• Hawk’s Nest Tragedy - solidified public opinion in favor of protecting
workers from the debilitating disease silicosis.

• A company contracted to drill a passage through a mountain in the

Hawk’s Nest region of West Virginia.
• Workers spent as many as 10 hours per day breathing dust created by
drilling and blasting.
• This mountain had an unusually high silica content.

• Silicosis normally takes 10 to 30 years to show up.

• Hawk’s Nest workers began dying in as little as a year.
• By the time the project was completed, hundreds had died.
TRAGEDIES THAT HAVE CHANGED THE
SAFETY MOVEMENT
• This tragedy & resulting public outcry led a group
of companies to form the Air Hygiene Foundation.
• To research & develop standards for work in dusty areas.

• The US Department of Labor helped make silicosis a

compensable disease in most states.
• Approximately 1 million workers in the US are
still exposed to silica every year.
• 250 people die annually from silicosis.
TRAGEDIES THAT HAVE CHANGED THE
SAFETY MOVEMENT
• Asbestos Menace - in 1964, Dr. Irving J. Selikoff told a conference on
biological effects of asbestos that the widely used material was
killing workers.
• Asbestos was once considered a “miracle” fiber.

• At the time of Selikoff’s findings, asbestos was one of the most

widely used materials in the US.
• Found in homes, schools, offices, factories, ships, and even in the filters
of cigarettes.

• This conference changed how Americans viewed not just asbestos,

but workplace hazards in general.
• Selikoff was the first to link asbestos to lung cancer and respiratory
diseases.
TRAGEDIES THAT HAVE CHANGED THE
SAFETY MOVEMENT
• Selikoff continued to study the effects of asbestos exposure
from 1967 to 1986.
• In the 1970s-80s, asbestos became a controlled material.

• Regulations governing use, standards for exposure were

established, and asbestos-related lawsuits changed how
industry dealt with this tragic material.
TRAGEDIES THAT HAVE CHANGED THE
SAFETY MOVEMENT
• Bhopal Tragedy - On Dec. 3, 1984, over 40 tons
of methyl isocyanate (MIC) & other gases, including hydrogen cyanide,
leaked into north Bhopal, India.
• Killing more than 3,000 people in its aftermath.

• It was discovered the protective equipment that could have halted

impending disaster was not
in full working order.

• The International Medical Commission found that

as many as 50,000 people were exposed, and
may still suffer disability as a result.
• This disaster shocked the world.
TRAGEDIES THAT HAVE CHANGED THE
SAFETY MOVEMENT
• Union Carbide Corporation, owner of the plant, was accused
of many things, including:
• Criminal negligence.
• Corporate prejudice - choosing poverty-stricken Bhopal, on the
assumption few would care if anything went wrong.
• Avoidance - putting its plant in Bhopal to avoid stricter US safety &
health standards.

• In February 1989, India’s Supreme Court ordered Union

Carbide India Ltd., to pay $470 million in compensatory
damages.
– Funds were paid to the Indian government to be
used to compensate the victims.
ROLE OF SPECIFIC HEALTH PROBLEMS

• Specific health problems tied to workplace

hazards have played significant roles in the
development of the modern safety and health
movement.
ROLE OF SPECIFIC HEALTH PROBLEMS
• Lung disease in coal miners was a major problem in the
1800s, particularly in Great Britain, where much of the
Western world’s coal was mined at the time.

• Anthrocosis, or the black spit, persisted from the early

1800s, when first identified, until about 1875.
• It was finally eliminated by safety &health measures.

• By the early 1940s, British scientists were using

the term coal-miner’s pneumoconiosis, or CWP,
to describe a disease suffered by many miners.
• Designated a separate, compensable disease in 1943.
ROLE OF SPECIFIC HEALTH PROBLEMS
• An West Virginia coal mine explosion that killed 78 miners
focused attention on mining health & safety.
• Congress passes Coal Mine Health & Safety Act, 1969.
• Amended 1977/78 to broaden scope of coverage.

• Congress held hearings on silicosis in 1936, and business,

industry & government representatives attended the National
Silicosis Conference.
• Finding that silica dust particulates did, in fact,
cause silicosis.
ROLE OF SPECIFIC HEALTH PROBLEMS

• Mercury poisoning was first noticed among citizens of a

Japanese fishing village in the early 1930s.

• A chemical plant near the village Minamata periodically dumped

methyl mercury into the bay that was the village’s primary source
of food.
• The citizens ingested hazardous dosages of mercury every time
they ate fish from the bay.
ROLE OF SPECIFIC HEALTH PROBLEMS
• Mercury poisoning became an issue in the US after a 1940s
study on New York’s hat-making industry.
• Many workers displayed the same types of symptoms
as the citizens of Minamata, Japan.
• A study linked mercury nitrate used in hat production.

• As a result, use of this hazardous chemical in the hat-making

industry was stopped.
• A suitable substitute—hydrogen peroxide—was found.
ROLE OF SPECIFIC HEALTH PROBLEMS
• By the time it was determined that asbestos is a hazardous
material, the fibers of which can cause asbestosis or lung
cancer (mesothelioma), thousands of buildings contained the
substance.
• As these buildings began to age, the asbestos— particularly that
used to insulate pipes—breaks down.
• As asbestos breaks down, it releases dangerous microscopic
fibers into the air.

• The fibers are so hazardous that removing asbestos from old

buildings has become a highly specialized task requiring
special equipment & training.
DEVELOPMENT OF ACCIDENT
PREVENTION PROGRAMS
• Widely used accident prevention techniques
include:

• Failure minimization, fail-safe designs.

• Isolation, lockouts, screening.
• Personal protective equipment.
• Redundancy, timed replacements, etc.
DEVELOPMENT OF ACCIDENT
PREVENTION PROGRAMS
• Industry began to realize:

• Improved engineering could prevent accidents.

• Employees were willing to learn and accept
established safety rules, which could be
enforced.
• Financial savings from safety improvement
could be reaped by savings in compensation
and medical bills.
DEVELOPMENT OF ACCIDENT
PREVENTION PROGRAMS
• Early safety programs were based
on the three E’s of safety:
• Engineering.
• Education.
• Enforcement.
 DEVELOPMENT OF ACCIDENT
PREVENTION PROGRAMS
• Engineering aspects of a safety program involve design improvements to
both product & process.

• Manufacturing processes can be engineered to decrease potential hazards

associated with them.

• Education ensures that employees know how to work safely, why it is

important to do so, and that safety is expected by management.

• Enforcement involves making sure employees abide by safety policies,

rules, regulations, practices, and procedures.
• Supervisors & fellow employees play a key role.
The End