HAPPY WORLD DAY FOR SAFETY AND HEALTH AT WORK - 28 April 2007

International Labour Organisation (ILO) declared 28th April, 2007 is the World Day for Safety and Health at Work with this year theme :Safe and Healthy Workplaces - Making Decent Work a Reality
Workers is the primary tool for all business. Without workers, any business will collapse. Let us take care of our workers by promoting and protecting their health and safety at workplace.
Happy OSH day to all.

Step 1: Identify the hazard

Photo 1:

Photo 2:




Can you identify what is the HAZARD in the above two photos?
Identification the hazard is the first step in Risk Assessment.

RISK ASSESSMENT IS MEASURING THE EXPOSURE TO HAZARD

All workplaces have health and safety hazard, the only difference is the type of the hazard. Although hazard can brings harm but without exposure to the hazard, the harm is not significance. So, how much exposure do you have to the hazard, is the main question in managing safety and health at workplace.
The steps taken to measure this exposure to the hazard is called risk assessment in OSH terminology. So risk assessment is a proactive steps to identify the hazard and its exposure to the workers.
The questions ask in health and safety risk assessment are :
1. What is the hazard?
2. Who are exposed to the hazard?
3. How much is the exposure?
4. What is the consequence if hazard released its harm during this expsoure?
5. Is the risk significant?
6. Are the control measures adequate to prevent the conseqeunces of the hazard?
I will give the anwer to the above questions in my next posting... stay tune

DOSH's Seminar on Occupational Health services

Yesterday (5th April), I attended one day seminar on occupational health services (OHS) organised by DOSH Sarawak. The seminar was attended by 250 participants, majority are OH practitioners. 5 papers were presented by OH experts. Dr Abu Hasan Samad, one of the OH expert and sifu in Malaysia, presented a paper on the effective way to implement OHS. He explained in detail on the scopes of OHS. 2nd speaker, Tuan Hj Anuar Mokhtar a well-known Industrial Hygienist from DOSH, presented a paper on the scope of duty of Industrial Hygienist. Dr Faridah Mohd Amin, Deputy Director (Occupational Health Section) of DOSH Putra Jaya presented in brief the new DOSH guideline (2005) on OHS.
Two speakers Ms Tham from BASF-PETRONAS and Mr Nawawi from one of PETRONAS subsidiary company in Kuantan, Pahang shared their experinces in implementation of OHS in their plant.
Hopefully this seminar will help OH practitioner to understand more on the OHS and the strategies to implement OHS at their organisation.
One person approached me asking about the "out source way" to provide OHS and I promised to propose to his organisation on this.