Chapter 4

Roles and Professional Certifications for Safety and

Health Professionals

Major Topics

• Safety and Health Manager

• Engineers and Safety

• Occupational Physician

• Occupational Health Nurse

• Risk Manager

• Safety Certifications

Positions in Safety and Health Team

• Safety and Health Manager: is the most important member [leader] of the safety and health team.

• Others are:• Safety engineer• Environmental engineer• Industrial hygienist• Health physicist• Occupational health nurse• Occupational physician

Impact of worker’s compensation and environment on commitment of corporate management to safety and health

• OSHA standards, onsite inspections, and penalties have encouraged a greater commitment to safety and health.

• Environmental, liability, and worker’s compensation issues have also had an impact, as has the growing awareness that providing a safe and healthy workplace is the right thing to do from both an ethical and a business perspective.

Difference between staff and line position

• Line authority means that the safety and health manager has authority over and supervises certain employees [other safety and health personnel].

• Staff authority means that the safety and health manager is the staff person responsible for a certain function, but he or she has no line authority over others involved with that function.

Problems in attempting to implement programs

• Lack of commitment: Safety and health professional should be prepared to confront a less than wholehearted commitment from top management in some companies.

• Production versus safety: At times, a safety or health measure will be viewed by some as interfering with productivity.

Succeed in today’s competitive global marketplace

• Competitiveness comes from continually improving a company’s productivity, quality, cost, image, service, and response time.

• These continual improvements can be achieved and maintained best in a safe and healthy work environment.

Use competitiveness to gain commitment to safety and health

• The way to gain company wide commitment to safety and health is to convey the message that a safe and healthy workplace is the best way to improve productivity, cost, quality, image, service, and response time.

• [The way not to gain a company wide commitment to safety and health is to quote government regulations as a reason.]

College majors that can lead to a careers as a safety and health manager

• Universities, colleges, and community colleges across the country have responded to the need for formal education for safety and health managers as well as other safety and health personnel.

• Associate degrees are available in industrial safety, occupational safety, environmental technology, safety and health management, and industrial hygiene.

• Baccalaureate degrees are available in industrial safety and health, occupational safety management and industrial hygiene.

Ongoing in-service training for safety and health managers

• In-service training, ongoing interaction with professional colleagues, and continued reading of professional literature are effective ways to stay current.

• New safety and health managers should join the appropriate professional organizations, become familiar with related government agencies, and establish links with relevant standards organizations.

Safety and health certifications

• Professional certification is an excellent way to establish one’s stature in the field of safety and health.

• To qualify to take a certification exam, safety and health managers must have the required education and experience and submit letters of recommendation as specified by the certification boards [fig 4-4, page 58] – Board of Certified Safety Professionals of America, American Board of Industrial Hygiene, Board of Certification in Professional Engineering, and The Institute of Industrial Engineers.

Professional Societies

• Professional societies are typically formed for the purpose of promoting professionalism, adding to the body of knowledge, and forming networks among colleagues in a given field [fig 4-5, page 58] – American Academy of Industrial Hygiene, American Industrial Hygiene Association, American Occupational Medical Association, American Society of Safety Engineers, National Safety Council, and Society of Toxicology.

An engineer who errs may harm hundreds

• Engineers can make a significant contribution to safety.

• Correspondingly, they can cause, inadvertently or through incompetence, accidents that result in serious injury and property damage.

• The engineer has more potential to affect safety in the workplace than any other person does.

• With a poorly designed seatbelt installed in 10,000 automobiles, the engineer has inadvertently endangered the lives of as many as 40,000 people (estimating four passengers per automobile).

How the design process can affect safety

• The engineer’s opportunity for both good and bad comes during the design process.

• The process is basically the same regardless of whether the product is being designed in a small toy or an industrial machine.

• Safety and health professionals should be familiar with the design process so that they can understand the role of engineers concerning workplace safety.

Engineers most likely to work as design engineers

• Engineers involved in design are usually in the aerospace, electrical, mechanical, and nuclear fields.

Safety engineer

• The title safety engineer is sometimes a misnomer because it implies that the person is a degreed engineer. This may not be the case, as typically the title is given to the person who has overall responsibility for the company’s safety program.

• This person is responsible for the traditional aspects of the safety program such as preventing mechanical injuries; falls, impact and acceleration injuries; heat and temperature injuries; electrical accidents; fire related accidents and so on.

Industrial engineers as safety engineers

• Industrial engineers are most likely to work as safety engineers.

• Their knowledge of industrial systems can make them valuable members of a design team, particularly one that designs industrial systems and technologies.

• They can also contribute to the company’s safety team by helping design job and plant layouts for both efficiency and safety.

Environmental engineers and safety

• Environmental engineering science is a relatively new field in which the application of scientific and engineering principles is used to protect and preserve human health and well being of the environment.

• It embraces the broad field of the general environment including air and water quality, solid and hazardous wastes, water resources and management, radiological health, environmental biology and chemistry, systems ecology, and water and waste water treatment.

Chemical engineers and safety

• Increasingly, industrial companies are seeking chemical engineers to fill the industrial hygiene role on the safety and health team.

• Modern chemical engineers, who are also called process engineers, are concerned with all the physical and chemical changes of matter to produce a product economically or result that is useful to mankind.

• Such a broad background has made the chemical engineer extremely versatile and capable of working in a wide variety of industries.

Industrial Hygienist• American Industrial Hygiene Association: Industrial hygiene is the

science and art devoted to the recognition, evaluation, and control of those environmental factors or stresses, arising in and from the workplace, which may cause sickness, impaired health and well being, or significant discomfort and inefficiency among workers or among citizens of the community.

• National Safety Council: An industrial hygienist has the abilities to: recognize the environmental factors and to understand their effect on humans and their well being; to evaluate on the basis of their experience and with the aid of quantitative measurement techniques, the magnitude of these stresses in terms of ability to impair human health and well being; and to prescribe methods to eliminate, control, or reduce such stresses when necessary to alleviate their effects.

Health Physicist

• Health physicists are concerned primarily with radiation in the workplace.

• Consequently they are employed by companies that generate or use nuclear power.

• Their primary duties include the following: monitoring radiation inside and outside the facility, measuring the radioactivity levels of biological samples, developing the radiation components of the emergency action plan, and supervising the decontamination of workers and the workplace when necessary.

Job of Occupational Physician

• Appraisal, maintenance, restoration, and improvement of the worker’s health through application of the principles of preventive medicine, emergency medical care, rehabilitation, and environmental medicine.

• Promotion of a productive and fulfilling interaction of the worker and the job, via applications of principles of human behavior.

• Active appreciation of the social, economic, and administrative needs and responsibilities of both the worker and work community.

• Team approach to safety and health, involving cooperation of the physician with occupational or industrial hygienists, occupational health nurses, safety personnel, and other specialties.

Job of Occupational Health Nurse

• Occupational health nursing is the application of nursing principles in conserving the health of workers in all applications.

• It involves prevention, recognition, and treatment of illness and injury, and requires special skills and knowledge in the areas of health education and counseling, environmental health, rehabilitation and human relations.

Concept of Risk Management

• Risk management consists of the various activities and strategies that an organization can use to protect itself from situations, circumstances, or events that may undermine its security.

• Risk managers work closely with safety and health personnel to reduce the risk of accidents and injuries on the job.

• They also work closely with insurance companies.

Role of Ergonomist

• Apply ergonomic principles to the design of a product, system, or work environment.

Achieving Certifications• Certified Safety Professional: Apply to the Board of Certified Safety

Professionals; meet the academic requirements; meet the professional safety experience requirements; pass the safety fundamentals examination; and pass the comprehensive practice examination [more on page 69].

• Certified Industrial Hygienist: Successful completion of the examination, meeting the educational requirements, and meeting the comprehensive professional level industrial hygiene experience requirements [more on page 70].

• Certified Professional Ergonomist: To take the examination, individuals must meet the following requirements: academic, work experience and work product [more on page 71].

• See their web sites for more information as the requirements keep changing.

Summary• The modern safety and health team is headed by a safety and

health manager.• The safety and health manager focuses on analysis, prevention,

planning, evaluation, promotion, and compliance.• Engineers design safety into products.• Occupational physicians are medical doctors who specialize in

workplace related health problems and injuries.• Occupational health nurses specialize in conserving the health of

workers through prevention, recognition, and treatment.• Risk management involves risk reduction strategies and transferring

risk to insurance companies.• Professional certification is an excellent way to establish credentials

in the safety, health, and environmental management profession.

Home work

• Answer questions 5, 9, 10, and 24 on page 75.• 5. Briefly explain what a company must do to succeed in

today’s competitive global marketplace.• 9. How can safety and health managers become certified

in their profession?• 10. Name three professional societies that a modern

safety and health manager may join.• 24. Explain how to achieve each of the following

certifications: certified safety professional, certified industrial hygienist, and certified professional ergonomist.