Health and Safety

What is Occupational Safety and Health?
1.    The term “Health and Safety” refers to the area concerned with protecting the safety and welfare off all employed individuals in the United States of America.

2.    Health and Safety programsaim to provide safe working environments for American employees through the delivery of suitable equipment and safety protocol. These actions instituted by such programs aim to prevent injuries or accidental deaths in the workplace. 
3.    Additionally,health and safety programs protect co-workers, family members, customers, employers, suppliers, nearby communities, and other individuals of the public who are impacted (directly or indirectly) by a particular workplace environment.
4.    Health and safety programs accomplish such goals through a variety of means and interactions. The programs institute courses to educate workers on a multitude of topics including: occupation hygiene, occupational medicine, public health, chemistry, safety engineering, or health physics.
5.    These programs are defined by the International Labor Organization and the World Health Organization as: “Occupational health should aim at the promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social well-being of workers in all occupations; the prevention amongst workers of departures from health caused by their working conditions; the protection of workers in their employment from risks resulting from factors adverse to health; the placing and maintenance of the worker in an occupational environment adapted to his physiological and psychological capabilities; and, to summarize, the adaptation of work to man and of each man to his job.”

Benefits of Health and Safety Programs
1.    Accidents, mishaps, or poor working conditions place enormous liability on the employer. Such problems can result in mounting legal fees, compensatory damages, fines, lost production, numerous opportunity costs, investigation time, lost goodwill from the workforce or employee-base, and loss in trust from customers and the general community. As a result of these risks, occupational requirements in regards to health and safety conditions are reinforced by the United States’ criminal and civil legal platform.
2.    The legal implications enforce health and safety requirements that must adhered to by all employers. Those entities that are negligent in caring for their employees or refuse to adhere to these policiesare susceptible to aggressive penalties in the form of fines and termination.
3.    Occupational health and safety programs promote health and safety procedures in the work place. These programs evaluate potential hazards and measure the risks associated through the implementation of procedures and precautionary measures in the form of safety protocol.
4.    Health and safety programs institute a baseline for safety control in the workplace and offer recommendations on how to avoid accidents or fix problems associated with safety protocol issues.
5.    The institution of Occupational health and safety policieseffectively reduce the number of injuries, deaths, liabilities, property damages, illnesses, worker compensation claims, and the loss of productivity attached to injured or displaced workers. A health and safety program can bolster employee safety, which in turn increases production.