Occupational Safety Essay Sample

Occupational Injury and illnesses occur during the normal day-to-day activities in the workplace. These occupational hazards either affect the employees at the workplace and sometimes casualties include the top management and clients at the premises. In most cases accidents occur at the least expected spots and in other cases, you may find that the hazard has been there all along and sorting it out has been procrastinated for a long time. It is an offence to procrastinate the handling of and health risk and it is penalized by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration.

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In the case of Harold Steege who was a 58 year old truck driver working at a small sand and gravel operation in North East Kansas. They worked in an excavation site at a nearby creek bedrock, the material is screened and then processed for later packaging and sales as a construction material. On the 17th day of April 2014, Harold packed his vehicle at the site, letting the excavator load it with the raw material. This material was to be transported to the manufacturing plant that was 3 miles away from the excavation site. Harold decided to leave the truck instead of staying inside of it. Harold was fatally hit by the excavator which led to his death immediately at the site. 911 calls were made but it was already too late for Harold Steege ("MSHA - Accident Prevention Program - Miner's Tips and Safety Ideas by Category", 2016).

Investigations were conducted by the Mine Safety and Health Administration following the death of Mr. Steege, the reports of the investigation concluded that the mine operator had not taken his time to train his truck drivers like Harold and the excavator operator on safe practices at the site. Death occurrences in the mining industry are too common in the month of April. Since the year 2000, there have been over 50 reports of mine operator dying while at work. The reason for this recurrent occurrences and the frequency within the month of April is that many mines do always remain idle during the winter seasons. So when workers resume their jobs, you find that most of the people coming back are new while other are experienced. The new miners are not trained on safety practices while at work. The lack of enough training of the staff leads to unplanned accidents and fatalities that risk loss of life. The Mining Health and Safety Administration ought to ensure that all the mining corporation conduct scheduled trainings and workshops for their employees in order to avoid such cases (Main, 2016).

The best way to prevent cases of deaths in mining stations is to implement a fully planned out training sessions for all the workers on topics such as; Safety Practices and Health Materials, the development and execution of a training plan by a given organization and training on rescue operations at the site. All mine workers should be trained on Accident Prevention mechanisms through integration of a training schedule within the organization.

The knowledge about sorting out back injuries, handling of belt conveyors and material handling, communication mechanism, drilling and blasting safety practices, Heavy machine handling, haulage and transportation and many other safety regulations that need to be adhered to is equally important to the health and safety of the workers. A trained worker is much more efficient is less likely to commit an accident at the site as opposed to having averagely knowledgeable workers. The cost of training compared to the cost of a life is a risk worth taking.

References

Main, J. (2016). Targeting a Deadly Month in Mining. U.S. Department of Labor Blog. Retrieved 7 April 2016, from http://blog.dol.gov/2016/03/31/targeting-a-deadly-month-in-mining/

MSHA - Accident Prevention Program - Miner's Tips and Safety Ideas by Category. (2016). Arlweb.msha.gov. Retrieved 7 April 2016, from http://arlweb.msha.gov/Accident_Prevention/appcategories.htm