Applying Hierarchical Loglinear Models to Nonfatal Underground Coal Mine Accidents for Safety Management

Underground mining is considered to be one of the most dangerous industries and mining remains the most hazardous occupation. Categorical analysis of accident records may present valuable information for preventing accidents. In this study, hierarchical loglinear analysis was applied to occupational injuries that occurred in an underground coal mine. The main factors affecting the accidents were defined as occupation, area, reason, accident time and part of body affected. By considering subfactors of the main factors, multiway contingency tables were prepared and, thus, the probabilities that might affect nonfatal injuries were investigated. At the end of the study, important accident risk factors and job groups with a high probability of being exposed to those risk factors were determined. This article presents important information on decreasing the number accidents in underground coal mines.     

Temporary jobs and the severity of workplace accidents

Introduction. From the point of view of workplace safety, it is important to know whether having a temporary job has an effect on the severity of workplace accidents. We present an empirical analysis on the severity of workplace accidents by type of contract. Method. We used microdata collected by the Italian national institute managing the mandatory insurance against work related accidents. We estimated linear models for a measure of the severity of the workplace accident. We controlled for time-invariant fixed effects at worker and firm levels to disentangle the impact of the type of contract from the spurious one induced by unobservables at worker and firm levels. Results. Workers with a temporary contract, if subject to a workplace accident, were more likely to be confronted with severe injuries than permanent workers. When correcting the statistical analysis for injury under-reporting of temporary workers, we found that most of, but not all, the effect is driven by the under-reporting bias. Conclusions. The effect of temporary contracts on the injury severity survived the inclusion of worker and firm fixed effects and the correction for temporary workers' injury under-reporting. This, however, does not exclude the possibility that, within firms, the nature of the work may vary between different categories of workers. For example, temporary workers might be more likely to be assigned dangerous tasks because they might have less bargaining power. Practical implications. The findings will help in designing public policy effective in increasing temporary workers' safety at work and limiting their injury under-reporting.     

Risk assessment: an approach to control hazards in mines

Accidents and injuries related to work are major occupational health problems in most of the industrialized countries.Traditional approaches to manage workplace safety in mines have mainly focused on job redesign and technical aspects of engineering systems.It is being realized that compliance to rules and regulations of mines is a prerequisite;however,it is not sufficient to achieve further reduction in accident and injury rates in mines.Proactive approaches are necessary to further improve the safety standards in mines.Unsafe conditions and practices in mines lead to a number of accidents,which in turn may cause loss and injury to human lives,damages to property,and loss of production.Hazard identification and risk assessment is an important task for the mining industry which needs to consider all the risk factors at workplaces.Applications of risk management approaches in mines are necessary to identify and quantify potential hazards and to suggest effective solutions.In this paper,the following risk estimation techniques were discussed:(i)DGMS(Directorate General of Mines Safety,India)risk rating criterion,and(ii)a matrix based approach.The proposed tools were demonstrated through an application in an opencast coal mine in India.It was inferred that the risk assessment approach can be used as an effective tool to indentify and control hazards in mines.     

Work-safety tension, perceived risk, and worker injuries: a meso-mediational model

IntroductionWork-safety tension arises when workers perceive that working safely is at odds with effectively doing their jobs. We proposed that workers’ perceptions of work-safety tension would be associated with higher levels of perceived risk, which would, in turn, relate to worker injuries on the job.MethodGrocery store workers (n = 600) completed an online survey and organizational worker injury reports were obtained for a two-year period following the survey. Survey results were linked to subsequent worker injuries using hierarchical generalized linear modeling.ResultsWe found support for the proposed meso-mediation model: department work-safety tension predicted subsequent worker injuries, partially through an association with workers’ risk perceptions.ConclusionsSafety researchers and consultants and organizational leaders should look beyond typically-examined safety climate constructs, such as management commitment to safety, and pay particular attention to workers’ perceptions of work-safety tension.     

Characteristics of worker accidents on NYSDOT construction projects

INTRODUCTION: This paper aims at providing cost-effective safety measures to protect construction workers in highway work zones, based on real data. Two types of accidents that occur in work zones were: (a) construction work area accidents, and (b) traffic accidents involving construction worker(s). METHODOLOGY/RESULTS: A detailed analysis of work zone accidents involving 36 fatalities and 3,055 severe injuries to construction workers on New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) construction projects from 1990 to 2001 established that five accident types: (a) Struck/Pinned by Large Equipment, (b) Trip or Fall (elevated), (c) Contact w/Electrical or Gas Utility, (d) Struck-by Moving/Falling Load, and (e) Crane/Lift Device Failure accounted for nearly 96% of the fatal accidents, nearly 63% of the hospital-level injury accidents, and nearly 91% of the total costs. These construction work area accidents had a total cost of $133.8 million. Traffic accidents that involve contractors' employees were also examined. Statistical analyses of the traffic accidents established that five traffic accident types: (a) Work Space Intrusion, (b) Worker Struck-by Vehicle Inside Work Space, (c) Flagger Struck-by Vehicle, (d) Worker Struck-by Vehicle Entering/Exiting Work Space, and (e) Construction Equipment Struck-by Vehicle Inside Work Space accounted for nearly 86% of the fatal, nearly 70% of the hospital-level injury and minor injury traffic accidents, and $45.4 million (79.4%) of the total traffic accident costs. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this paper provide real statistics on construction worker related accidents reported on construction work zones. Potential preventions based on real statistics have also been suggested. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: The ranking of accident types, both within the work area as well as in traffic, will guide the heavy highway contractor and owner agencies in identifying the most cost effective safety preventions.     

Off-road truck-related accidents in U.S. mines

IntroductionOff-road trucks are one of the major sources of equipment-related accidents in the U.S. mining industries. A systematic analysis of all off-road truck-related accidents, injuries, and illnesses, which are reported and published by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), is expected to provide practical insights for identifying the accident patterns and trends in the available raw database. Therefore, appropriate safety management measures can be administered and implemented based on these accident patterns/trends.MethodsA hybrid clustering-classification methodology using K-means clustering and gene expression programming (GEP) is proposed for the analysis of severe and non-severe off-road truck-related injuries at U.S. mines. Using the GEP sub-model, a small subset of the 36 recorded attributes was found to be correlated to the severity level.ResultsGiven the set of specified attributes, the clustering sub-model was able to cluster the accident records into 5 distinct groups. For instance, the first cluster contained accidents related to minerals processing mills and coal preparation plants (91%). More than two-thirds of the victims in this cluster had less than 5 years of job experience. This cluster was associated with the highest percentage of severe injuries (22 severe accidents, 3.4%). Almost 50% of all accidents in this cluster occurred at stone operations. Similarly, the other four clusters were characterized to highlight important patterns that can be used to determine areas of focus for safety initiatives.ConclusionsThe identified clusters of accidents may play a vital role in the prevention of severe injuries in mining. Further research into the cluster attributes and identified patterns will be necessary to determine how these factors can be mitigated to reduce the risk of severe injuries.Practical applicationAnalyzing injury data using data mining techniques provides some insight into attributes that are associated with high accuracies for predicting injury severity.     

Port safety and the container revolution: A statistical study on human factor and occupational accidents over the long period

Several factors can affect occupational accident frequency, namely economical factors, technologies used (low automation, discontinuous operating) job design, organization of work/environmental conditions and human factors. In particular, technological advances in industrial activities can give rise to improvement in productivity and in occupational health and safety, but not necessarily simultaneously. The beginning of the container transport dates back to 50 years ago, but while containerization changed everything, from ships and ports to patterns of global trade, its impact on work injuries was not explored at all. The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between work organization, job experience, productivity and occupational accidents, from the starting of the container expansion to nowadays, considering Genoa port (Italy), one of the largest of the Mediterranean Sea. In order to minimize possible reporting biases, such as underreporting or reclassification to a lower level of severity, injury statistics are elaborated starting from data collected directly on-site, from internal accident or medical-aid reports. An in-depth statistical analysis on occupational injuries in the years 1980–2006 is carried out, with reference to frequency indexes, mechanism of injury and material causes. The increase of container-ships traffic and, consequently, the sharp change in port infrastructure involved a rapid modification also in the work organization, with particular reference to the number and characteristics of workforce (decrease from 5783 to nearly 1000 employees and increase of low experience workers from 28% to 74%). The striking high percentage increase of young or low experienced workers in handling container (and performing correlated new tasks) caused a remarkable increase of the risk for occupational injuries. In the studied port, we recorded an increase of the frequency index (injuries per hundred thousand hours worked) from 13.0 to 29.7. It results that the increased expansion of shipping container utilization is not connected to a correspondent human factor safety implementation. Main risk factors are pointed out, revealing an increase of accidents due to transport vehicle (+8.3%) and a reduction of accidents caused by substance or materials (?4.5%). These factors show a statistical significant correlation with the new job tasks. Consideration of these findings may enable managerial solutions and workplace organization interventions for the prevention of injuries and safety performance improvement in port activities.     

Risk taking and accident frequency among Finnish forestry workers

The results of previous studies on the relationship between risk taking and accidents have been contradictory. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between risk taking and accident frequency among Finnish forestry workers. The subjects were 228 forestry workers whose risk taking was measured on a questionnaire with 25 items. The accident frequency was calculated based on both company-recorded and self-reported accidents. There were no significant relationships between risk taking and accident frequency. Even after elimination of age and work experience by partial correlations, there was no significant correlation between risk taking and accident frequency. Of the personality traits of the forestry workers, impulsiveness and neuroticism correlated significantly with risk taking but not with accident frequency. Two explanations for the failure to find significant correlation between risk taking and accident frequency are given.     

Economic cost of occupational accidents: Evidence from a small island economy

Though a number of occupational accidents have occurred amongst the working population in Mauritius, no study has been carried out to measure the costs associated with such accidents to the best of our knowledge. This study bridges this gap by measuring the economic costs of occupational accidents by using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The results show that occupational accidents result in costs amounting to nearly Rs. 168 mn of which a major part is accounted for, by loss in productivity. Alongside the highest rate of accidents took place within small enterprises and younger workers are the one taking higher risks mainly due to lack of knowledge and risk awareness. The findings also reveal that only 4% employers believe that investment in safety and health is important for maintaining good business partly because most of the costs are borne by the state. Such a situation therefore requires the need for awareness on practical health and safety systems and procedures among both employees and employers with a view to prevent accident and injuries.     

A survey of forest workers in New Zealand. Do hours of work, rest, and recovery play a role in accidents and injury?

PROBLEM: A number of structural and organizational changes have occurred recently within the New Zealand Forestry Industry, with concerns being raised about the impact of these changes on the forestry worker in terms of fatigue, sleepiness, and compromised safety. This study explored the relationship of fatigue, and some of its key determinants, with accidents and injuries in a group of forestry industry workers in New Zealand. METHOD: A total of 367 forestry workers responded to a self-administered questionnaire. RESULTS: Fatigue was found to be commonly experienced at work in the forest, with 78% of workers reporting that they experienced fatigue at least "sometimes." This study found that certain groups of workers reported long working hours, reduced sleep, compromised recovery time, and intensely paced work. The results of logistic regression analysis showed that recent sleep, number of breaks taken during the workday, and specific job/tasks were independently associated with reporting of high fatigue levels at work. Near-miss injury events were significantly more common among those reporting a high level of fatigue at work. Accidents and lost-time injury were associated with length of time at work, ethnicity, and having had near-miss injury events. DISCUSSION: Together, these results suggest that fatigue and aspects of work organization, which are likely to be fatiguing, may be associated with compromised safety for forest workers. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: With an already slim margin of error present in forest operations, an impairment due to increased fatigue may constitute a significant risk factor for accidents and injuries in this workforce. The results indicate the need for further examination of shift and workload management among forestry workers, as well as a role for improving industry awareness about the causes and consequences of fatigue.     

基于事故演化网络的旅游安全及风险防控研究

为做好旅游活动的安全管理和风险防控,构建旅游安全事故演化网络,从旅游事故演化的角度分析旅游中常见的事故类型及其演化过程;根据旅游事故发生的时序和相关程度将旅游安全事故分为4级,从事故节点的出入度、子网节点数和支链数进行分析,判断不同旅游事故的风险大小;此外,从不同结构演化链的角度,总结旅游事故演化的特征.结果表明:旅游...     

基于HFACS-BN模型的危险化学品事故人因路径分析*

为提高危险化学品安全管理水平,收集我国134起以人为主因的危险化学品事故,构建危险化学品事故的HFACS-BN模型,并基于贝叶斯网络对危险化学品事故中的人因路径及各因素灵敏度进行分析。研究结果表明:行为违规是导致事故的最主要不安全行为;在复杂路径中,环境因素和操作者状态具有较高的灵敏度,与其相关的风险认知与处理不当是阻碍事故预防的关键因素;在非复杂路径中,操作者状态与运行计划不当具有较高的灵敏度,其所涉及的监督违规、组织过程和组织氛围,是导致危险化学品事故的根本起点,并可依此分析事故直接原因和间接原因;操作者状态在2种路径中均表现出高灵敏度,因此化工企业在人员管理上要加强关注职工状态,减少不安全行为的出现。     

煤矿职工安全心理重要性分析

为了预防或控制煤矿事故中人为因素的影响,通过对煤矿生产活动的特点介绍,分析了煤矿生产活动对煤矿职工心理的影响和煤矿职工的主要安全心理问题,阐述了煤矿职工安全心理在煤矿生产活动中的重要性,为避免或减少煤矿职工出现不安全心理及不安全行为提供依据.     

Blood on the coal: The effect of organizational size and differentiation on coal mine accidents

Introduction

Each year, there are at least 100,000,000 occupational accidents and 100,000 occupational deaths in the world. In the United States, one of the safest countries in the world in which to work, there were more than 5,400 workplace fatalities and 5.9 million workplace injuries in 2007. The cost to American industry and taxpayers is estimated to be at least $170 billion per year. Further, as illustrated by accidents such as Three Mile Island and Bhopal, industrial accidents potentially impact a much wider sphere than that of the injured worker and his or her employer. As the repercussions of organizational accidents reverberate through organizations and are felt from human resources to accounting, firms are beginning to incorporate messages of safety in their missions and strategies. As firms organize to achieve safer work environments, they are faced with decisions on how to structure their activities in terms of, among other things, size and differentiation.

Method

This paper explores the impact on accident rates of size and differentiation at the corporate and mine levels of mining companies in an effort to create a framework for thinking about organizational accidents from a structural perspective.

Results

The results suggest that larger mines are safer than smaller mines, and that mines with less task diversity are safer than mines with greater task diversity. The results also suggest that at the corporate level, task diversity decreases mine accidents. These results may help mining executives and engineers structure their corporate activities and individual mines more effectively to help reduce accidents.     

老空水水害事故原因分析及防治措施研究

矿井老空水水害一直是困扰煤矿安全生产的不利因素,必须加强其防治措施方面的研究。通过对老空水水害事故的分析,建立了一个系统全面的老空水水害事故的致因鱼刺图模型;并针对鱼刺图模型的各个致因事件提出了老空水防治的具体措施;然后根据安全技术措施等级顺序要求的具体原则,对措施进行等级排序。笔者提出了以下观点老空水的防治是多方位的;防治措施是有等级的;合理设计,严禁剃头开采是消除老空水水害事故的本质安全型措施。     

Development of a relative risk model for roof and side fall fatal accidents in underground coal mines in India

A relative risk model for roof and side fall fatal accidents was developed using loglinear analysis of two-way contingency table. A few statistics such as potential fatalities (PF), relative risk of fatalities (RRF) and safety measure effectiveness (SME) were derived which can be used as key safety performance indicators of roof and side fall accidents in underground mines. The model was applied to large roof and side fall fatal accident data for a period of 6-years occurred in six companies involving 292 underground coal mines. The application reveals that effectiveness of safety measures across different locations in underground mines varies and focus is mainly concentrated in highly populated workplaces such as face. The model and the statistics developed in this study are generic and can be applied to any industrial setting.     

Small enterprise owners’ accident causation attribution and prevention

Small enterprises have difficulty in the systematic prevention of accidents. This study explores how owners of small enterprises attribute accident causation and what they learn about accident prevention after an accident. Interviews were carried out with owners of 22 small (1–19 employees) construction and metal industry enterprises that recently had reported an accident with an expected injury absence of over two weeks. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. The results reveal that after a relatively serious accident the owners predominantly attribute the incident to unforeseeable circumstances, and secondarily to worker faults. A possible explanation is both self- and group-defensive attributions in order to avoid responsibility and blame. The reciprocal and close social relations between owners and workers make it difficult for the owners to be solely responsible for the accident. The study presents a paradox: learning from the accidents seems to be negative as the owners need to abstain from accident prevention in order to maintain that accidents are unforeseeable, and the injured worker returns to work under the same unsafe conditions as before the accident. The study indicates that efforts to improve accident prevention in small enterprises need to find ways to avoid defensive attribution in order to attain successful outcomes.     

施工人员安全能力模型研究

在能力定义及能力模型文献综述的基础上,结合建筑业的实际,给出施工人员安全能力定义及其内涵,认为施工人员所表现出来的安全能力是安全能力任务与其内在特质相互匹配的结果;剖析安全能力与不安全行为及事故之间的关系,得出安全能力的匮乏必然导致施工人员作出不安全行为进而导致事故的发生。根据上述研究,结合建筑施工安全影响因素,提出并建立了施工人员安全能力模型。依据美国OSHA安全事故数据库中记录的一个高处坠落事故案例,应用该模型分析施工人员所表现出来的安全能力,从实践角度理解施工人员安全能力。此外,提出施工人员安全能力研究中一些有待思考和探索的问题。     

Work-related injuries of educational support staff in schools

This study aims to describe the characteristics of occupational injuries to educational support staff (service worker) in schools. In this research, 803 injured workers registered in 2015 were analyzed in terms of their gender, age, work experience, school type, work type, accident type, agency of accident, nature of injury and injured part of the body for each occupation. The workers were classified into after-school instructor, custodian and cooking staff. Accidents occurred mainly due to slips (35.6%) on floor/stair or contact with high temperature (18.1%). Also, the workers mostly fractured (41.2%) or had burns (19.3%) on their leg/foot (37.1%) or arm/hand/finger (29.8%). The results showed the difference in characteristics and injury pattern of injured persons for each occupation type, addressing the need for customized preventative measures for each situation. The results of this study can be a baseline in devising policies and guidelines for preventing accidents of service workers in schools.