John F Kennedy Memorial Hospital

Tubman National Institute of Medical Art (TNIMA)

Course: Primary Health-Care II

Topic: Discuss occupational hazard of the below categories Mechanical hazard

Accident hazard and foreign hazard

Submitted to: Mr. Stephen Owah

Submitted by: group 6

Naomi S Gbotoe ID#:1665

Emmett Donsuah ID#:1660
Mariam m karama ID#:1669
Vero seijebah ID#:0489

Due Date: September 25, 2021

 Contents

Introduction...............................................................................................................3

Occupational Hazard.................................................................................................3

Mechanical Hazards..................................................................................................4

Strains/Sprains, Cuts, Shearing Injuries............................................................4

Crushing Injuries.................................................................................................5

Accident Hazard........................................................................................................6

Conclusion.................................................................................................................6

Reference...................................................................................................................7
Introduction
A hazard is a source or a situation with the potential for harm in terms of
human injury or ill health, damage to property, damage to the environment,
or a combination of these.

Hazards at work may include noisy machinery, a moving forklift, chemicals,

electricity, working at heights, a repetitive job, or inappropriate behavior that
adversely affects a worker’s safety and health.

Occupational Hazard
An “occupational hazard” is any workplace condition that causes a risk to
employee health. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA),
the government organization in charge of keeping workers safe, has defined six
main categories of occupational hazards:
 Safety. This category includes any condition, substance, or object that can
injure a worker, like working from heights, spills on floors, machinery with
moving parts, confined spaces, steep stairs, or exposed electrical wiring.

 Chemical. There are many kinds of hazardous chemicals and toxins in

different workplaces, including environmental smoke, cleaning products,
acids, pesticides, carbon monoxide, and flammable liquids.

 Biological. In some settings, such as farms, zoos, hospitals or medical

offices, or veterinary clinics, workers can be exposed to biological health
hazards like blood, fungi, mold, viruses, animal droppings, and insect bites.

 Physical. These are hazards in the environment that can harm your body
without you actually touching it, like radiation, prolonged exposure to
sunlight, extreme high or low temperatures, and loud noise.

 Ergonomic. These hazards put strain on your body over a period of time.

You may just feel sore or cramped in the short term, but repeatedly sitting or
standing in awkward positions or completing the same movements over and
over, across a long period of time, can lead to long-term injury and illness.
  Work organization hazards. Workplace violence, discrimination, lack of
respect, sexual harassment, and other conditions are hazardous to mental,
emotional, and physical health.

Mechanical Hazards
• Mechanical hazards are those associated with power-driven machines,
whether automated or manually operated.
▪ Concerns about such hazards date back to the Industrial Revolution
and the earliest days of mechanization.
• Failure to provide proper machine guards and enforce their use can be costly
for companies
▪ Mechanical hazards that are not properly guarded are implicated in
thousands of workplace injuries every year.
▪ Small gains in productivity obtained by willfully bypassing
mechanical safeguards on machines can cost companies huge fines
& medical bills.

If workers fail to follow safety precautions, these procedures can happen to

humans, instead of workpieces.

Strains/Sprains, Cuts, Shearing Injuries

• A strain results when muscles are overstretched or torn, a sprain results
from torn ligaments in a joint.
▪ Strains and sprains can cause swelling and intense pain.
• A cut occurs when a body part comes in contact with a sharp edge.
▪ Seriousness of cutting or tearing depends on damage done to skin,
veins, arteries, muscles, and even bones.
• Power-driven shears for severing paper, metal, plastic, elastomers &
composites are widely used.
▪ Such machines often amputated fingers & hands when operators
reached under the shearing blade, and activated the blade before
fully removing their hand.
 Crushing Injuries
• Crushing injuries occur when a part of the body is caught between hard
surfaces that progressively move together—crushing anything between them.
• Two categories: squeeze-point types & run-in points.
▪ Squeeze-point hazards exist when two hard surfaces, at least one
of them moving, push close enough together to crush objects
between them.
▪ Run-in point hazards exist where two objects, at least one of
which is rotating, come progressively closer together.

• Body parts can also be crushed in other ways.

▪ A heavy object falling on a foot; A hammer hitting a finger.

Accident Hazard
Since the days of industrial revolution, accidents have been occurring in the
chemical process industries. But the frequency as well as severity of these
accidents have significantly increased during the last few decades as the pace of
industrialization, as well as the density of population near industrial complexes,
have increased rapidly with time. Table 1 presents examples of some of the larger
accidents of the last 25 years. It may be seen that the adverse impacts of the
accidents depend not only on the type of industry but also on its surroundings.
[ CITATION FIK \l 1033 ]

Major Accident Hazards (MAHs) is defined as an incident involving the loss of life
that occurs within or without the site area with ten or more injuries and/or one or
more injuries outside or release of toxic chemical or explosion or fire of spillage of
hazardous chemical resulting in ‘on-site’ or ‘off-site’ emergencies or damage to
equipment’s leading to the stoppage of process or having an adverse effect(s) on
the environment .
A major accident is also defined as an “unexpected, sudden occurrence including,
in particular, a major emission, fire or explosion, resulting from abnormal
developments in the course of an industrial activity, leading to a serious danger to
workers, the public or the environment, be it in immediate or delayed, inside or
outside the installation and involving one or more hazardous substances”.
Conclusion
To effectively control and prevent hazards, employers should:

 Involve workers, who often have the best understanding of the conditions
that create hazards and insights into how they can be controlled.
 Identify and evaluate options for controlling hazards, using a "hierarchy of
controls."
 Use a hazard control plan to guide the selection and implementation of
controls, and implement controls according to the plan.
 Develop plans with measures to protect workers during emergencies and non
routine activities.
 Evaluate the effectiveness of existing controls to determine whether they
continue to provide protection, or whether different controls may be more
effective. Review new technologies for their potential to be more protective,
more reliable, or less costly.

Reference
https://www.osha.gov/safety-management/hazard-prevention

https://staff.emu.edu.tr/emineatasoylu/en/Documents/Machine%20hazards

%20fall1718.pdf

file:///C:/Users/Mongar/Downloads/nms-03-22357.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_hazard