Industrial development, no doubt, is very essential for the national development to provide jobs, increase production and thereby raise the standard of living of the people. But there is an ugly side of the industrial development as well.
In our efforts to make out a living through a number of professions we have ignored many important aspects of life and made several mistakes.
These are creating unhealthy conditions of work, increasing risk of diseases, risk of accidents in the factories another industrial establishments and spoiling the environment, by creating pollution and even by ignoring the safety norms, which threans to create serious problems of health, both physical and mental.
Image Source: eoc.org.hk
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Thus such potential risks which we create while pursuing our occupations are known as “occupational hazards”.
Every three minutes a worker dies of an occupational injury or illness in the world. Every second at least four workers are hurt, according to a report of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
India is one of the countries with a highest record of industrial accidents.
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Causes of accident and safety management
Accident Prone Industries:
Work involves place, men, machines, and material, certain industries are more prone to accidents than others. These are textile, metal, machinery, chemicals and, transport equipment.
In the agricultural section also heavy tolls of death take place.
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Small Units too not Free from Occupational Hazards:
Small and household industries also pose high risk of health hazard, to workers even more than that in large industries.
According to a Anergy conducted on national basis, a large percentage of workers suffer from various ailments as they have no protection from various pollutions.
In potteries and ceramics industries 16% workers suffered from impairment of lungs. In DDT industry 22.4% workers suffered from Asthama. In insecticide industry also workers had poor health.