OSHA

OSHA



Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

Occupational Safety and Health

Reducing and eliminating all work safety hazards including diseases, illnesses, injuries and stress deals by occupational safety and health. The basic areas of occupational health include multiple areas of expertise such as social sciences, health sciences, statistics, safety engineering, ergonomics, and biohazard waste and control. The people opting for this career are likely to find jobs in private industry, colleges and universities, and federal and state government. Specialists in the field of occupational helath seek to understand the illness and injuries that take place within the organization, as well as factors of causes linked with the injuries. Such an understanding is an important step in prevention. Finding causes of injuries and illness helps occupational health specialists establish primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention programs to reduce the amount of worker displacement and psychosocial anguish and, therefore, increase productivity (Pelley, 2008).

History of Worksite Health Protection

The industrial revolution is the time when working environment need to reform. It is the time when textile industry moved to machines from human and animal power. The machines are better and faster than human. It has the capacity to produce at a speed much faster than human and animal power. The impact on production was tremendous that is why it soon becomes the most important part of U.S. workforce. There are several advantages of using machines and technology (i.e., increased and better production), but not all individual looked the negative side effects of the use of technology and machinery on the health of workers. Even today, we still have difficulties to understand how chemicals, machines and working environment affect the bodies or health of workers (Mintz, 1984).

From the period 1850 to the 1900s, Lemuel Shattuck encouraged the period a period of organization and reorganization of legislation to promote health. His 1850 report to the Sanitary Commission of Massachusetts called for an establishment of local health boards to deal with issues such as safety, sanitation, drug use, and health of children (Rothstein, 2008).

The Lalonde Report, a landmark publication providing explanation on the causes of deaths and diseases, along with a series of national and international conferences, encouraged the occupational safety and health promotion movement in the United States. Throughout the next decade, health promotion remained associated to occupational health. Not until the 1970s, however, did worksite health promotion and protection begin to gain strength.

Conduit between the science of the medical community and the U.S. workforce is provided by the health promotion and protection. (OSHA) Occupational Safety and Health Administration formed by President Richard Nixon on December 29, 1970, a governmental organization keen to keep every working American healthy. From 1970 to the present day, OSHA has helped facilitate new laws and regulations to keep the workforce safe in an ever-changing world, ranging from the first safety standards adopted for workplaces in 1971 to protecting workers against terrorism in 2001.

According to Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) most deaths caused by the motor vehicles among working ...