DIPLOMA IN OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND

HEALTH

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH (OSH 105)

BY: ANTHONY ANAK KAPOL@TAPOL

CHAPTER 1
 2
LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of lecture student should be able to:
 To explain the basic concepts of Occupational Health (OH).
 To define the impact of OH in the prevention of occupational accidents and disease
 To determine the promotion of healthy and safe workplaces and prevention of disease.
OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH HISTORY

STONE AGE

HUNTER
GATHERER

INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION

INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY
How OSH started

 Early Developments
 Mining in ancient Greece and Egypt
 The oldest industry (gold, silver and lead mines)
 Very hazardous
 Miners were slave, criminals and prisoners
 Complete disregard for miners health and safety
 No effort to upgrade the work conditions
 Considered as punishment
 Focused solely on the aspect of productivity and TOTALLY ignoring the
safety and health of the miners
Phase 1 - Industrial Revolution
(1750-1850)

Early industrialization in England

 The traditional system of manufacturing was the cottage industry
 IR took place in the textile industry. Progress driven by a process
of positive feedback between spinning and weaving components
of textile manufacturing
 Two icons of this phase: child labor and industrial town
 Living conditions become worsed for large parts of population
Evolution of Distillation in France
 In 1780, major industrialist Chaptal adopted a standard model of still for the
distillation of wine
 The evolution of distillation illustrates features of this phase:
 Growing impact of science on industrial technology
 The central role of the self taught amateur inventor
 Impact of industrialization on the legal system
(development of patent laws)
Phase 2 - Industrial Revolution
(1850-1900)
Industrialization spreads to
1. Other industries
 Railroads
 Rubber (Charles Goodyear’s discovery of vulcanization)
 Synthetic dyes (derived from the chemical substances)
2. Organizational changes
 Rise of modern corporations versus traditional family-owned firms
 Raised of trained professionals versus self-taught amateurs
Phase 4 - Industrial Revolution
(1945-present)
 Technological progress in many industries has been accelerated
as an effect of the war effort by countries involved in the conflict
 Aviation industry
 Plastics
 Nuclear
 Aluminium
 Electronics
 Computers
Working conditions during the
Industrial Revolution
1. Exploitation to child and women labor
 Working long hours with very poor working conditions.

 Lead to mental torture

 Poorly nourished
 Poor housing
2. Epidemic and industrial accidents and diseases
 Due to confined space and unhygienic working conditions

3. Increased social problems

 Traditional family structure was broken
 Increased in alcoholism and prostitution
Effects of industrialization

1. On community health
leads to:
 Urban migration
 widower
 Alcoholism and prostitution
 Overcrowding
 Poor public health
 Malnutrition
 Epidemics
Legislations during IR
The First Factory Act 1819 was passed
 To prevent children younger than 10 years old to be employed
 To limit working hours to 10 hours a day
 To protect young persons in all types of textile mills

The Factory Act 1833

 The appointment of factory inspectors
 The need to have doctors to certify that a child is at least 9
years old (based on appearance and strength)
 With the introduction of birth registration in
1837, doctors were no longer required to carry
out age certification
 The Factory Act of 1885 gave doctors new
duties:
 Medical fitness for work
 Investigate accidents
 Towards the end of the 19th century, workers in
dangerous trades were required by law to
undergo medical surveillance.
INFLUENCES ON MEDICINE

(doctors begin to see the

correlation between works and
diseases)
Georgeus Agricola (1494-1555)
(George Bauer)

 Father of modern
geology
 A German
 Wrote about
diseases amongst
miners (1527) in
De Re Metallica
 “….some mines are so dry that they are
entirely devoid of water, and this dryness
causes the workmen even greater harm,
for the dust which is stirred and beaten
up by digging penetrates into windpipe
and lungs and produce difficulty in
breathing, and the disease which the
Greeks call asthma. If the dust has
corrosive qualities, it eats away the
lungs, and implants consumption in the
body; hence the mines women are found
who have married seven husbands, all of
whom this terrible consumption has
carried off to premature death…”

De Re Metallica
Georgius Agricola, 1556
Paracelsus (1493-1541)

 Father of modern Toxicology

 Born in Switzerland
 Real name: Philipus Aureolus
Theopahastus Bombastus von
Hohenheim
 Traveling scholar and later
traveling doctor
 Chemist, physician, prof. of
physics and surgery
 Paracelsus describe diseases
amongst miners and smelters
PARACELSUS ESTABLISHED THE DOSE
RESPONSE RELATIONSHIP

“All substances are poisons; there is

none which is not a poison. The right
dose differentiates a poison and a
remedy”
Von der Besucht
Paracelsus, 1567
Bernadino Ramazzini (1633-1714)

 Father of Occupational
Medicine
 The first to recommend that
doctors should enquire about a
patient’s occupation and to
visit worksite
 Wrote on occupational asthma
among mill workers, lead and
mercury poisoning
 He wrote the book De Morbis
Artificium Diatriba
Ramazzini’s contributions

When a doctor visits a working-class home he should be content to

sit on a three-legged stool, if there isnt gilded chair, and he should
take time for examination and to the questions recommended by
Hippocrates, he should add one more – What is your occupation?

De Morbis Artificium Diatriba

Bernardino Ramazzini, 1770
Percival Pott
(1713-1788)
 English physician
 Associated soot with scrotal
cancer amongst chimney
sweeps
 Associated with many medical
conditions;
 Pott’s fracture of the
ankle (fracture
dislocation)
 Pott’s puffy tumor –
extradural abscess due to
middle ear infection
Charles Turner Thackrah
(1795-1833)
CHARLES THACKRAH WAS THE FIRST TO PRACTICE
INDUSTRIAL MEDICINE IN THE ENGLISH SPEAKING
WORLD
 Develop guidelines for the prevention of certain diseases
 Advocate the elimination of lead as a glaze in the pottery industry
 Use of ventilation and respiratory protection to protect knife grinders
 Change in the work practice of tailors and in the design of their work stations
to eliminate their cramp postures which he felt contributed to the high
prevalence of tuberculosis
 Published book in 1831, The Effects of The Principal Arts, Trades and
Profession and of Civic States and Habits of Living on Health and
Longevity
 Contributed to the passing of the Factory Act in 1883 and in the Mines Act
in 1842
Definition of OH

The promotion and maintenance of

the highest degree of physical,
mental and welfare of workers in
all occupations

A joint ILO/WHO committee 1950

26

 Occupational Health – promote health

care of workers and creating
awareness about importance of health
and techniques to remain healthy.

 It aims at identifying occupational

diseases at an early preventive stage.
Focus of OH

The ILO Committee setting three main objectives on

Occupational Health:
1. Health promotion at the workplace
2. Improvement of workplace conditions, making it more suitable
to the worker
3. Development of proper work organisation and work culture
supporting the occupational safety and health programmes
AIM OF OCCUPATIONAL
HEALTH
1. Health promotion at workplace
2. Maintained the existing health conditions
3. Reduce the impact of disease occurence or health prevention
29 Purpose of Occ. Health

 Generate morale

 Worker’s comfort

 Reduce medical bills

 Reduce absenteeism

 Complying legal requirement

Fields/knowldege that related to
OH
1. Occupational medicine
 Evaluate the health of workers in the aspect of
fitness to work, health monitoring, work-related
diseases, early treatment and emergencies, level
of injuries and disease as well as the promotion
of work program after injury or illness
 It covers the protection and management of all
hazards at the workplace
2. hygiene 4. ergonomics
 Field of science that used to control  How to suits the work task and its
of health hazards at the workplace environment to the human body

3. Industrial toxicology 5. epidemiology

 Study of chemicals that affect the  Study of distribution of diseases and
human biological system determined its factors amongs human
population
OH related Organizations/Bodies in
Malaysia
 DOSH – legislation, standard, OSH promotion
 NIOSH – training, consultancy, research
 SOCSO – compensation, OSH promotion
 Ministry of Health
33 Personnel involved in
occupational health
 Physicians
 Occupational health doctor (OHD)
 Occupational health nurses (OHN)
 occupational hygienists
 toxicologists
 psychologists
 microbiologists
 epidemiologists
 Ergonomists
 work organization experts
 lawyers
Roles of Occupational Health Personnel

“See the health effects,

diagnose the illness, find
the effects”

“Control the exposure

and monitor the effects’’

34
35 Occupational Health Services

1. Health education and promotion

2. Health risk assessment
3. Safety and health risk control
4. Exposure monitoring
5. Fitness to work
6. Medical surveillance (Laboratory Investigation)
7. Medical Treatment
8. First Aid
9. Impairment Assessment
36 Human anatomy and physiology
that relate to occupational health
 Examples of body system that can affect due to exposure to
hazardous substances.
- Cardiovascular system
- Lung/ Respiratory System
- Skin/ integumentary system
- urinary systems
- Nervous systems
- Reproductive systems
- Musculoskeletal systems
- lymphatic system
- digestive system
- endocrine system
37 Conclusion

 Occupational Health – promotive health care of

workers and creating awareness about
importance of health and techniques to remain
healthy.

 The main aim of occupational health is

 health promotion,
 maintenance of existing health conditions and
 reduction of the impact of disease occurrence
 References
38

Orhan Korhan.(2017). Occupational Health. IntechOpen.

https: //doi – org. newdc.oum.edu.my/10.5772/63281.
Irvin Sam Schonfield P. M., & Chu-Hsiang Chang, P. (2017).
Occupational Health Psychology. Springer Publishing Company.
Odd one, E. (2016). Occupational Exposure and Health Risks.
Nova Science Publishers, Inc
Goetsch, D.L. (2015). Occupational Safety and Health for
Technologist, Engineers and Managers, Global Edition.
[electronic resource/ (8th edu). Pearson Education Limited.