I once spent a summer reviewing accounts of dust fires (in paper mills and such) all around the world and, here’s the thing, once you’ve read multiple accounts of people being killed and horribly injured in perfectly preventable accidents, you DO start to think, hey, maybe rules are good, actually
People act like OSHA is this gang of fun-haters who make up stupid rules to make their jobs annoying. Literally every single regulation OSHA has ever written was in response to someone getting maimed; usually killed, but sometimes merely losing a limb or two. Occasionally breathing corrosive gas.
Exactly the same thing applies to railway safety laws. Signalling systems, double tracks, limited working hours, deadmans switches and all the rest of it all arrived at the cost of hundreds of deaths.
Yes. Loss of life used to be *built in* to construction projects. It used to be part of the *planning*
According to some reports I’ve seen, more than 40% of workers on the Panama Canal died
We have lots of drums at work with lots of very scary warning labels on them.
If anyone goes into the wrong area without the correct PPE on they get shouted at by everyone.
This is definitely a good thing
That itself is progress: that people police each other. At one time, not very long ago, not using safety equipment was a badge of honour (and insisting on it was considered a weakness)
And the old guard are actually the best for shouting at people, who you'd suspect would be the ones that would be the "we never needed this in the old days" lot
I think some bright spark managed to switch the badge of honour to getting them to "catch the young 'uns out", LOL
Très cunning
My first substantial job was with an Australian state government department responsible for occupational health and safety. Convincing construction companies to move the cost of planning in death and injury to preventing them (eg provide hard hats, steel capped boots) was a Herculean effort.
1995-98. Their inhumanity was jaw dropping.
They also really didn’t comprehend risk assessment and management. Same thought processes as the people who don’t believe Y2K was stopped because of a lot of mitigation.
Indeed, the planners asked about the expected cost in lives.
Note: A lot of the Panama Canal deaths were from disease, rather than industrial accidents as such.
Fire training and awareness should be on the curriculum. You only have to watch the video of the hairdryer-triggered fire (and the flashover less than two minutes later) to understand the risks.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=ezJ6...
It is covered (in the UK) in both science lessons where relevant (CO dangers for example in chemistry) and in PSHE at various point.
Whether people absorb the information and apply it is another matter, of course
I read an article recently in which a someone - I think I project manager in his fifties? - basically said, these health and safety rules can all feel a bit much cant they’d but it isn’t nice that where they’re followed, we and those we love are much less likely to die or be maimed at work.
