Manual handling, working at height, and operating or working near moving vehicles are the leading causes of fatal and nonfatal accidents in Ireland, says the Health and Safety Authority (HSA).
Manual accidents are the largest category of reported accidents across all sectors, accounting for 30 per cent of the total, according to the HSA's recently published Work Programme 2001.
Falls from a height accounted for 14 fatalities in 1999. Working at heights also accounted for the second-largest category (11 per cent) of nonfatal accidents in most sectors, and for nearly half of all deaths in the construction industry.
"Most fatalities are associated with falls from unguarded edges, from ladders or through fragile roofs and roof-lights," says the authority.
The deaths of 16 people at work in 1999 were associated with workplace vehicles and mobile equipment, accounting for one in four workplace fatalities. This figure excludes road traffic accidents. Vehicles and mobile equipment killed more people than any other occupational hazard on farms. As many as 54,300 people suffered an illness or disability caused or made worse by work in 1999, according to Central Statistics Office figures. This led to 31,000 absences from work, 28,400 of which lasted longer than three days. An estimated 22,600 people suffered a bone, joint or muscle illness or disability, while "an estimated 12,700 persons believed they had suffered an illness or disability from stress caused or made worse by work", says the HSA. Violence was the second most common cause of reported workplace injuries in the healthcare sector. The HSA aims to develop a long-term national strategy to prevent work-related ill health. By the end of this year, the authority will have:
developed an action programme for manual handling;
developed a stress intervention programme for implementation in 2002;
enforced the protection of employees in places of entertainment from the effects of noise through 100 inspections;
established a working group to review smoking at work; and
begun to implement the recommendations of the Task Force on Workplace Bullying.
The construction sector had 18 fatal accidents in 1999, and the highest rate of non-fatal accidents. The HSA aims to bring about a "substantial reduction" in injuries and ill-health in the sector by targeting manual handling, working at heights, and operating and working near vehicles.
It will target health and safety training, safety representation and consultation, welfare facilities and access to occupational health and safety services. Twenty-three people died in the agriculture and forestry sector in 1999, nine of them children. It is the second most dangerous sector for fatal accidents and it has the third-highest rate of non-fatal accidents. The most dangerous activities are driving tractors, manual handling, working at height and handling livestock.
Within the next three years, the HSA aims to ensure that at least one-quarter of farms have a safety statement (only 13 per cent currently do) and that half of the farms with young children have secure play areas.
Within the manufacturing sector, the HSA is targeting workplaces with a poor safety record, poor safety consultation, workplaces without adequate safety statements and those not inspected in the past five years. The transport, storage and warehousing sector has the second-highest rate of non-fatal reportable injury. Some 500 workplaces are to be targeted, inspecting traffic management, training of lift-truck operators and access to high loads. Moving machinery causes almost one in 10 workplace accidents in the Republic. The HSA will undertake 300 inspections of machinery by the end of this year.
The HSA's Work Programme 2001 is available from the authority, 10 Hogan Place, Dublin 2. Tel: 01 614 7000. Website: www.hsa.ie
jmarms@irish-times.ie
