Work, Health, and Occupational Hazards

Posted on Nov 2, 2024 in Medicine & Health

Work and Health

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. It includes three aspects:

Physical health: Related to bodily integrity.
Mental health: Indicative of emotional balance.
Social health: It alludes to positive relationships with others.

Basics of Occupational Risk Prevention

Prevention means all activities or actions taken or planned in all phases of a company’s activity to avoid or reduce risks arising from work. It must be present at all stages of the company’s activity, from the shop floor to administrative offices. Its mission is to prevent any existing hazards by removing them or, for those that cannot be eliminated, trying to reduce their damaging effects.

Occupational Risk

Occupational risk is the possibility that a worker suffers harm from a particular job. Working conditions are considered any job characteristic that could significantly influence the generation of safety hazards and worker health. These include:

The general characteristics of premises and facilities (stairs, space per worker, ceiling height, etc.).
The equipment, products, and tools in the workplace.
Physical agents (noise) and chemical and biological agents (viruses).
The procedures for using and manipulating the above agents.
The organization and work organization.
Other work characteristics that create risks.

Principles of Prevention

Avoid hazards.
Assess risks that cannot be avoided.
Combat risks at their source.
Adapt the work to the individual in terms of the work itself, equipment, working methods, and production. Ergonomics is the science responsible for adapting the workplace to the physiological and psychological conditions of the worker.
Take into account the evolution of technology.
Replace dangerous elements with those involving little or no hazard.
Plan prevention coherently, seeking to incorporate it into the company’s art, work organization, and working conditions.
Adopt measures that prioritize individual and collective protection.
Provide appropriate instructions to workers. All workers must be trained and informed.

Techniques of Prevention

Safety at Work

Its purpose is to prevent any risk from occurring. It addresses identifying any accidents at work (AT), controlling ATs that have occurred by studying their causes, and preventing them from recurring.

Hygiene at Work

Its purpose is to prevent occupational diseases. It involves detecting pollutants, studying the level of concentration and exposure period, and establishing appropriate measures.

Ergonomics

(The technique that affects fatigue) is responsible for adapting the workplace and its environment to the physiological and psychological conditions of the worker to optimize safety, comfort, and efficiency. It includes:

Geometric ergonomics: Conditions of the workstation.
Environmental ergonomics: Environmental factors.
Time ergonomics: Working time.
Perceptive ergonomics: Work equipment adapted to the worker.

Psychology

(Study of dissatisfaction) aims to prevent workers from suffering psychological damage. It involves studying the monotony of tasks, the pace of work, job status, the duration of the workday, leave, etc.

Occupational Medicine

Its purpose is to maintain workers’ health in optimum condition.

General Duties of Employers

Ensure the safety and health of their workers.
Integrate prevention activities into all phases of business activity.
Comply with regulations for the prevention of occupational hazards.
Assume the cost of health and safety measures, without charging labor.

Duties with Respect to Workers

Address obstructions for the company in case of serious and imminent danger.
Regularly monitor the health of workers.
Allow participation in prevention.
Provide equipment and means of protection.
Provide special protection to certain groups (pregnant women, minors, and temporary workers).

Duties with Respect to the Workplace

Develop a prevention plan.
Organize prevention and emergency measures.
Develop and maintain documentation as dictated by the law on prevention.
Coordinate prevention efforts.

Workers’ Rights

Right to information and training.
Right to business stoppage in case of serious and imminent danger.
Right to periodic health monitoring, consultation, and participation.

Duties of Workers

Respect the rules of prevention.
Ensure the safety and health of oneself, peers, and others who may be affected.
Correctly use machinery, tools, work equipment, and safety equipment.
Inform the employer of any situation involving a risk to health.
Cooperate with the employer to ensure adequate prevention and protection.

Health and Safety Committee

The health and safety committee will be constituted in all workplaces with 50 or more workers. It consists of safety representatives, employers, and their representatives. The powers of safety representatives include:

Working with company management to improve preventive action.
Promoting the cooperation of workers in implementing regulations on occupational risk prevention.
Being consulted by the employer.
Monitoring and controlling compliance with regulations for the prevention of occupational risks.

Occupational Disease (PD)

Technical: It consists of the deterioration of workers’ health due to overexposure to unhealthy conditions at work or in the environment.
Legal: It is incurred by an employee due to the activities established in a regulatory framework.

Accidents at Work (AT)

Technical: It is an abnormal, unwanted event that unexpectedly interrupts the continuity of work and causes harm to individuals.
Legal: It is any personal injury suffered by the worker in connection with or arising out of work.

Types of Accidents at Work

Traveling ATs: These are accidents suffered by the worker on the way to or from work. Also considered ATs are those suffered by the employee due to the performance of union duties, tasks not peculiar to their professional status, or during movements made to satisfy the job (mission ATs).
Act of rescue: These are accidents suffered by the worker while performing actions to save people who are not in the workplace.

Differences Between AT and PD

An occupational disease is contracted as a result of regular activities. It is possible to detect the potential occurrence of a PD by studying the working environment. It is not easy to determine when the worker has contracted the disease. The technique to combat PD is hygiene at work.
An AT occurs due to an abnormal event in the working environment. However, it is impossible to predict when an AT will occur. The AT occurs at a particular time. The technique for avoiding ATs is safety.

Occupational Hazards

Occupational risk is the possibility that a worker suffers harm resulting from their work. If the risk is not controlled, the health and integrity of workers may be at risk, and damage can occur. Occupational risk is considered grave and imminent if it is very likely to occur in the immediate future and could pose a serious injury to the health of workers.

Occupational damages are diseases, illnesses, or injuries that are work-related. These include industrial injuries, occupational diseases, fatigue, job dissatisfaction, and premature aging.

Risk factors are all working conditions that may be hazardous to workers’ health as they upset the balance of physical, mental, and social health. Major risk factors include:

Based on security conditions: The characteristics of premises, facilities, machinery, equipment, products, tools, and vehicles.
Derived from the environment: Physical agents (noise, lighting, electricity, temperature, vibration, radiation), chemical agents (toxic substances), and biological agents (viruses, bacteria, fungi).
Derivatives of psychosocial work conditions: Work processes, work organization, and workload.
Derivatives of worker characteristics: Age, health, education, and family situation.

Classes of Measures to Avoid Risks

Prevention techniques are designed to protect workers from occupational hazards. Professionals try to suppress the damage by acting on the causes that produce them. These techniques include safety, hygiene, ergonomics, psycho-sociology, and medicine.
Protection measures do not eliminate the existence of risk factors but rather seek to avoid their consequences by providing protective equipment to reduce the occurrence of damage.

Organizational and Psychosocial Risks

These risks arise from various factors, including those derived from the organization of working time, the characteristics of the task, and the structure of the organization.

Factors Arising from the Organization of Working Time

Shift work and night work are factors that negatively influence the health of workers. This type of work creates risks that impact health and cause a serious imbalance due to:

Disruption of sleep and activity cycles.
Changes in food habits and digestive issues.
Serious impact on social life, including implications for family life.

Factors Related to Organizational Structure

Employee participation in the company increases productivity and improves performance and product quality. Well-planned teamwork can be a good way to increase participation and reduce the risks of isolation and stress among workers.
The leadership style of managers can also impact worker well-being. A very hierarchical and authoritarian organization can lead to insecurities and lack of motivation among workers.

Factors Related to the Characteristics of the Task and Workload

The workload is the set of psychophysical requirements to which the worker is subjected throughout their workday.

The physical burden arises when a worker must perform many tasks that involve significant muscular effort at a rate that does not allow the human body to recover.
The mental load is defined as the level of mental activity necessary to perform a job. It is influenced by the amount of information to be handled, the difficulty of the response to be given, the time available to make decisions, and the individual worker’s ability to perform the job.

Damage Caused by Organizational and Psychosocial Factors

Job Dissatisfaction

Job dissatisfaction is one of the main changes experienced by workers as a result of the organization of their work. It indicates that job characteristics do not correspond with the needs of the worker.

Fatigue

Fatigue is a decrease in working capacity and body care in workers, motivated by the performance of a task during a given time. It can be of two types:

Physical fatigue: Occurs when a worker experiences progressive muscle wasting due to physical exertion or uncomfortable positions adopted on the job.
Mental fatigue: Occurs when work tasks require a high level of intellectual activity, such as attention and memory.

Stress

Stress occurs when there is a mismatch between worker skills and working conditions.

Burnout

Burnout means being burned out. It is exhaustion and lack of motivation resulting from a continuing sense of job stress and is considered an advanced stage of stress.

Mobbing or Moral Harassment at Work

: situation suffered by workers on which exerts a extreme psychological pressure and systematically in the workplace. It is a type of stress. The attacker uses a position of power as physical force. Seniority … behaviors may include: actions against personal dignity or reputation through offensive remarks, ridiculed for his appearance… Action against the course of employment, ordering a lot of work or difficult or instead monotonous and repetitive. Actions related to the manipulation of information, no reports on aspects of their work or explaining things in a hostile manner. Actions unfair compared with others, as bad times, degrading tasks or in more quantity and pay gaps.