Procedures for Prevention of Occupational Accidents and Serious Incidents in Waste-Management Industry

Abstract

Decreasing the number of occupational accidents in the waste-management industry is an urgent task as accidents occur more frequently in this industry than in others. The present report investigated accidents involving chemicals in the waste-management and chemical industries and proposed an accident prevention procedure in the form of a flow chart. The causes of the accidents were classified into two kinds of factor: "hardware" problems, which are due to a mechanical failure or a disordered working environment, and "software" problems, which are due to human error or climate of the organization. The resulting flow chart, consisting of the key words or key sentences extracted from the accidents, presents a range of procedures from investigation of the causes of accidents to consideration of specific response measures. It was shown that occupational accidents and serious incidents could be prevented using the same procedure regardless of the kind of accident, including fire, explosion, oxygen deficiency and poisoning.