Skip to main content

Accident / Incident and Ill-Health Data Rates

 Incident data can be used to support hazard identification, risk assessment and risk factor. Some of the accidents data collected is used to generate the statistics required by legislation but other uses are to:

  • Classify industries according to risk.
  • Classify workplaces.
  • Classify occupations.
  • Consider accident trends.
  • Consider accident trends.
  • Consider part of the body injured - use of protective clothing.
  • Use ' Cause of injury' to determine hazards in a workplace.
  • Consider where the fault lies.
  • Measure the effect of preventive / control measure.
It can sometimes be difficult to obtain and interpret such information.

Accident and Disease Ratios

In making comparisons between various industries, or between work areas in the same factory, it is useful to consider the commonly used accident and disease rates. Following are some Calculations

Incidence Rate

Incidence reflects the number of new cases in relation to the number at risk.
This is Calculated from:
                                                Number of work-related injuries x 1,000
                                                Average number of persons employed

It is a measure of the number of injuries per 1,000 employees and is usually calculated over a period of time, e.g. a year.
It is often applied to discrete events, such as accidents.

Frequency Rate

This can be calculated from:

                                                Number of Work- related Injuries x 100,000
                                                Total number of man-hours worked

It is a measure of the number of accidents per 100,000 hours worked.

Severity Rate

This is:
                                                Total number of days lost x 1,000
                                                Total number of man-hours worked

It is a measure of the average number of days lost per 1,000 hours worked.

Prevalence Rate

Prevalence is a term often used to describe ill health in terms of the proportion of persons who have the prescribed ill-health condition at a particular time.

It can be calculated from:

                      Total number of cases of ill health in the population x 100
                                  Total number of persons at risk

This calculation will give the percentage of the population with the disease.

The calculations above will help professionals in their daily work routine. It will further, enables them to calculate and trace the safety trend of the organization. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Accident / Incident Ratio Studies (F.E Bird Triangle)

The accident triangle, also known as Heinrich's triangle or Bird's triangle, is a theory of industrial accident prevention. It shows a relationship between serious accidents, minor accidents and near misses and proposes that if the number of minor accidents is reduced then there will be a corresponding fall in the number of serious accidents The triangle was first proposed by Herbert William Heinrich in 1931 and has since been updated and expanded upon by other writers, notable Franck E. Bird. It is often shown pictorially as a triangle or pyramid and has been described as a cornerstone of 20th century workplace health and safety philosophy. In recent times, it has come under criticism over the values allocated to each category of accident and for focusing only on the reduction in minor injuries. There is no shortage of data on incidents such as accidents or near misses. Some researchers have studied the figures in details and concluded that there appears to be a relationship b...
Post a Comment
Read more

EVENT TREE ANALYSIS (ETA)

Event tree analysis ( ETA ) is a forward, top-down, logical modeling technique for both success and failure that explores responses through a single initiating event and lays a path for assessing probabilities of the outcomes and overall system analysis. This analysis technique is used to analyze the effects of functioning or failed systems given that an event has occurred.   ETA is a powerful tool that will identify all consequences of a system that have a probability of occurring after an initiating event that can be applied to a wide range of systems including: nuclear power plants, spacecraft,  and chemical plants. This technique may be applied to a system early in the design process to identify potential issues that may arise, rather than correcting the issues after they occur. With this forward logic process, use of ETA as a tool in risk assessment can help to prevent negative outcomes from occurring, by providing a risk assessor with the probability of occurrence...
Post a Comment
Read more

Maslow ( Hierarchy of Needs)

 Abraham Maslow suggested five levels of human need, which he arranged in a hierarchy. The order in which the needs are listed is significant in two ways: It is the order in which they are said to appear in the normal development of the person. It is the order in which they have to be satisfied and if earlier needs are not satisfied, the person may never get around to doing much about the later ones. From this theory, you might expect that people in a poor society will be mostly concerned with physiological and safety needs, whereas those in an affluent society will manage to satisfy those lower needs in the hierarchy and , in many cases, will be preoccupied with the need for self-actualization. However, Maslow's hierarchy stresses that co-operation can occur only at higher levels between mature individuals, the lower order needs leading to conflict between individuals. Yet, primitive tribes seem to co-operate more than advanced societies, where conflict between individuals is enco...
Post a Comment
Read more