Question

Discuss the predicament that a safety professional faces knowing that some OSHA regulations are outdated and may not provide adequate protection for workers. Recommend an approach that you believe would overcome the issue.

Answer 1

OSHA is nothing but the occupational health & safety administration. It was formed to protect the safety of the workers who are working in different organizations , industries & along with that will help the environment also by limiting the emissions and all by setting some standards.

But there are many regulations which are set by the OSHA are outdated.

For example the chemical emissions in a particular industry which is working on chemical compositions may cause severe damage to the health of of the people who are working there. In such condition OSHA has set many rules n regulations for such industries to safeguard the worker's health and safety. But these may get outdated as Time passes. So the work of the OSHA is to update the rules accordingly with change in time.

There are many rules already working under OSHA guidelines. But there are some rules which need to be updated very frequently.

Coming to my approach towards such outdated rules is :

1. Segregate the rules which needs to be frequently updated such as environmental health index issues like emissions etc.

2. Try to work more on frequently updatable issues because these are the one's which harm the environment n workers the most in that particular organization.

3. Take regular updates from the workers who are working in line & collect health data's from them monthly.

4. If your company is automobile, Plastic manufacturing, chemicals manufacturing, rubber manufacturing, pharmaceuticals etc. Such companies need more safety ideas for workers as they emit more harmful chemicals into the air which are further inhaled by the workers.

5. Collecting monthly data, charts, graphs of emissions, radiation in the air & comparing it to the standard datas.

6. Updating the standards frequently to safeguard the worker's health n environment.

7. Regular exchanging of PPE's.

8. Continuously measuring the company's standards with OSHA standards.

9. Outdated standards must be discussed in International OSHA committee meetings & timely updates must be made to the OSHA guidelines n laws.

10. The workers also should try to improve the quality of the OSHA by suggesting their personal experiences in line. This is the easily available update that one can get & can adapt to the system easily.