INDUSTRIAL SAFETY // SHA ADVISOR // PART I

The industrial safety advisor in the company is the person with the responsibility to make known all aspects of Health Safety and Environment (SHA). Through the fulfillment of programs aimed at the successful management and control of hazards and risks in the facilities, equipment and environment; all framed in the current legislation governing the matter in the respective country. Guaranteeing its permanent validity in all the activities of the Organization and installing the SHA culture in the company.

But, what is Industrial Safety?

It is a set of laws, principles, criteria and planned norms, with the purpose of preventing accidents and having under control the risks that can cause damage to workers and people in general, to the environment, equipment and materials.

The industrial safety exercises its objective supported by industrial hygiene. Known as the science dedicated to evaluate, recognize and control, those elements of environmental risks, present by occasion of work, which can cause accidents and/or occupational diseases, affecting the health and welfare of workers.

However, the SHA advisor must be the person who knows all this terminology in order to elaborate the safety plan for all the sections or departments of the organization.

It is essential that the SHA advisor has leadership and impeccable conduct, so that his work is recognized and can adapt the safety plan to all hierarchical levels of the company.

Now, let's get to know a little of the terminology that the advisor must be familiar with, as a start to the implementation of the safety plan.

Risk: Probability of danger that exposes the worker to injury or physical harm.

Hazard: Property or characteristic inherent to a system, plant, process, equipment, work tool, activity, material or its standard condition, with the capacity to cause harm to people or the environment.

Hazardous Process: Any element at work that can damage the health of workers, whether arising from the objects and means of work, the interaction between these and the activity, the organization and division of labor or other dimensions of work, such as the environment and means of protection.

Occupational Accident: An event that produces in the Worker a functional or bodily injury, permanent or temporary, immediate or subsequent, or death, resulting from an action that may be determined or supervened in the course of work.

Occupational Disease: It is the pathological condition contracted as a result of work or exposure to the environment in which the worker is obliged to work, and those pathological conditions attributable to the action of physical agents, ergonomic and meteorological conditions, chemical agents, biological agents, psychological and emotional factors that are manifested by an organic injury, enzymatic or biochemical disorders, functional disorders or mental imbalance, temporary or permanent, contracted in the work environment.

It is important to emphasize that the organization must provide all the physical, economic and environmental means for the SHA culture to be successfully implemented in the company. In the following parts of this paper we will know what this is all about.

Until another opportunity, I bid you farewell @yonglerosales.

Bibliography consulted:

Organic Law of Prevention, Conditions and Environment of Work, (LOPCYMAT).