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Risk Assessment & OSHA

OSHA was created in 1970 to ensure safe working conditions for American workers. It sets and enforces standards to protect workers from health and safety hazards. OSHA employs inspectors to visit worksites and issue citations for violations. While injuries are easier to track, occupational diseases and exposures likely cause over 60,000 deaths annually in the US. OSHA sets limits on airborne chemicals but has only done so for around 500 substances despite thousands of known workplace hazards.

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47 views

Risk Assessment & OSHA

OSHA was created in 1970 to ensure safe working conditions for American workers. It sets and enforces standards to protect workers from health and safety hazards. OSHA employs inspectors to visit worksites and issue citations for violations. While injuries are easier to track, occupational diseases and exposures likely cause over 60,000 deaths annually in the US. OSHA sets limits on airborne chemicals but has only done so for around 500 substances despite thousands of known workplace hazards.

Uploaded by

razia ramzan
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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RISK ASSESSMENT

& OCCUPATIONAL
HEALTH AND
SAFETY
ADMINISTRATION
BS ENV 7 T H SEMESTER
INTRODUCTION TO OSHA
OSHA is part of the United States Department of Labor. The
administrator for OSHA is the Assistant Secretary of Labor
for Occupational Safety and Health. OSHA's administrator
answers to the Secretary of Labor, who is a member of the
cabinet of the President of the United States.

OSHA was created under the Occupational health and


Safety Act of 1970, to assure safe and healthful working
conditions for working men and women by setting and
enforcing standards and by providing training, outreach,
education and assistance.
BACKGROUND
More than 60 percent of U.S. citizens aged 18 and above, work full
time.
These people face many of the same hazards on the job as those
who do not work full-time face in their daily lives; rather, workers
almost invariably are exposed to these hazards at a much higher
frequency, intensity, or concentration.
In addition, of course, workers are exposed to various unique
hazards that are not found outside the occupational setting.
A central irony in considering occupational risk assessment risk
assessment is that most environmental health standards were
motivated by discoveries of human disease in the workplace
Unfortunately, hazards in ambient environment capture more
attention than similar occupational hazards, and occupational
injury was the first workplace problem area to gain national
attention.
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911, which claimed 146 victims in New
York City (Von Drehle, 2003),
Explosion in Texas City, in a docked ship carrying
ammonium nitrate (1947)
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906) detailed working conditions in the meatpacking
plants around Chicago
All these events led to the creation of
Administration (OSHA) in 1970, the same year as
the United States Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) was established
Even though, perhaps as many as 10 times more
workers die prematurely from occupational
disease than from acute occupational injury, and
although there were many examples of worker
disease in the past (e.g., Hawk’s Nest, black lung,
brown lung etc.), OSHA continues to devote a
very large and arguably a growing percentage of
its staff, budget, and enforcement resources to the
problem of worker injury.
EMPLOYER REPORTED WORKPLACE
INJURIES & ILLNESSES (2016)
There were approximately 2.9 million nonfatal
workplace injuries and illnesses reported by
private industry employers in 2016, which occurred
at a rate of 2.9 cases per 100 full-time equivalent
(FTE) workers,
Private industry employers reported nearly 48,500
fewer nonfatal injury and illness cases in 2016
compared to a year earlier
U.S. FEDERAL APPARATUS TO ASSESS
AND MANAGE WORKPLACE RISKS: OSHA
Congress established two agencies, OSHA and NIOSH
when it enacted the Occupational Safety and Health Act in
1970
As a rough rule of thumb, OSHA has roughly 2,200
employees (down from a high of 2,950 employees in 1980),
It has a budget of roughly $470 million annually (as
compared with EPA’s budget of roughly $8 billion).
OSHA uses its resources to undertake three fundamentally
different and complementary activities: enforcement,
standard setting, and education/outreach/partnership
programs.
OSHA employs roughly 1,200 inspectors, who visit
worksites and look for violations of specific OSHA
safety and health standards which allows OSHA to
issue citations against employers who knowingly
fail to abate “recognized hazards that are causing
or are likely to cause death or serious physical
harm”
Unlike EPA, which relies on state personnel to
enforce many of its regulatory programs,
OSHA carries out workplace inspections, many of
which are programed, while others are in response
to complaints filed by employees or to the
accidents resulting in multiple causalities and
hospitalization cases
OCCUPATIONAL
DISEASES & EXPOSURES
The total number of deaths attributed to occupational
exposures is more difficult to quantify and is much greater
than the number of injury fatalities
Leigh and colleagues (1997), developed an estimate of “the
incidence, the mortality, and direct and indirect costs
associated with occupational injuries and illnesses in the
United States” for the year 1992 by taking data from several
government agencies.
They estimated that roughly 60,000 deaths and 850,000
illnesses annually can be attributed to chronic diseases
caused by workplace exposures
OSHA sets enforceable permissible exposure
limits (PELs) to protect workers against the health
effects of exposure to hazardous substances,
including limits on the airborne concentrations of
hazardous chemicals in the air. Approximately 500
PELs have been established.

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