CHAPTER 13 : OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT

(http://www.occupationalsafetystrategies.com.)

What is occupational health and environment? Occupational health and environment is:

(a) An area concerned with the safety, health and welfare of people engaged in work or employment. 
(b) It deals with all aspects of health and safety in the workplace and has a strong focus on primary prevention of hazards.
(c) It is also a multidisciplinary field of healthcare concerned with enabling an individual to undertake their occupation, in the way that causes least harm to their health.


Occupational Health

• Promote health & safety awareness among the employees and responsibility to control and protect themselves from occupational hazards at workplace.
• Instill physical & mental strength to employees in connection with the workload to avoid stress at work.
• Continuous monitoring among health personnel who are exposed to hazards at workplace.

Under Section 15 of OSHA, employers are responsible for ensuring the safety, health and
welfare of all employees.

Risk of Occupational Health

The risk of workers suffering from occupational diseases is dependent on the following factors;

1. The type of hazard
2. Duration of exposure
3. The number of hazards exposed
4. Socio-demographic factors (e.g. age, gender, ethnicity and health history)
5. The use of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment)


The scope & activities of Occupational Health
1. Establish Safety & Health Committee in health facilities
2. Audit Safety and Health at workplace
3. Conducting risk assessment in all KMM facilities
4. Notify poisoning cases (pesticide/chemicals), occupational injuries (fall, cut, needle-stick Injury) or occupational disease (TB, hearing loss, skin disease, lung disease) among health personnel and investigate the cases.
5. Audiometry, stress, Hepatitis B Screening
6. Disease Prevention & Control programme

7. Provide training (chemical handling, safety etc.)

(http://www.aware365.com.au/sites/aware365/files/pictures/pic-blog-consulting.jpg)

Scope & Activities EH

Monitoring & inspection of several organizations such as;
1. PLKN (national service training program)
2. Prison
3. Detention camps
4. Sanitary Inspection at school, market, recreational park, estates residential, farm
5. Management of environmental pollution
6. Investigation of open burning and nuisance complaints

7. Inspection of solid waste disposal site
8. Inspection of Building Plan/Renovation/Sewerage Plan
9. Building Inspection for Certificate of Fitness for Occupancy (CFO)
10.Cemetery inspection
11.Certificate of import/export of body parts or corpse, body ashes
12.Inspection of TASKA, TADIKA/TABIKA, University and colleges

Regulations Involved
1. Occupational Safety & Health Act 1994 (Act 514)
2. Factories and Machinery Act 1967 (Act 139)
3. Education Act 1996
4. Care Centres Act 993 (Act 506)
5. Private Higher Educational Institutions Act 1996


Tools
Commonly practices, in order to assess occupational health and environmental health scope/study;
• Occupational health & safety – HIRARC, CHRA (DOSH)
• Environmental & Health – EIA, HIA, EHIA (DOE)

HIRARC
• HIRARC is an integration tool to identify, assess/measure and to control hazard and risk of
any workplace and its activities. 

CHRA
• The Chemical Health Risk Assessment (CHRA) is an assessment that has to be conducted by the employer arising from the use, handling, storage or transportation of chemicals hazardous to health in their workplace.

EIA
• Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a the environment of a proposed project and to
study to identify, predict, evaluate and communicate information about the impact on
detail out the mitigating measures prior to project approval and implementation.

HIA or EHIA
• WHO defines HIA as “a combination of procedures methods and tools by which a
policy, program or project may be judged as to its potential effects on the health of a
population, and the distribution of those effects within the population,”
• HIA is the process of estimating the potential impact of a chemical, biological, physical or
social agent on a specified human population system under a specific set of conditions and

for a certain timeframe.

References
http://www.occupationalsafetystrategies.com
wikipedia
noted that had been given from my lecterur Sir Mohd Jamalil Azam Bin Mustafa