IF ACCIDENT KILLS, DOES PPE SAVE LIVES?

When it comes to word accident, what comes out in our mind is road accident involving vehicles but workplace accident is something that terrified us. All possible effort has been done, such as implementation of law ; OSHA 1994, FMA 1967 and other related law, house rules, training, possible control measure and the participation of workers itself to make sure accident at the place of work can be minimize to the lowest level possible. The question and issue arise is, why workplace accident reported is still very high?

From statistics published by Department Of Safety and Health, occupational accidents by sector as investigated for the year of 2010 showing the increasing number of accident compare to statistics of 2009. At 2009, highest cases reported for Permanent Disabilities (PD) comes from manufacturing sector with 79 cases followed by Agriculture, Forestry, Logging and Fishing sector with 8 cases. At 2010, Manufacturing sector still at the highest rank of reported PD cases with 162 cases, increment of 83 cases compared to 2009 followed by Agriculture, Forestry, Logging and Fishing with 18 cases. For Non Permanent Disabilities cases investigated on 2009, Manufacturing leads the number of accident with 1186 cases; Agriculture, Forestry, Logging and Fishing with 363 cases while 2010 still showing increment with Manufacturing reporting 1493 cases; Agriculture, Forestry, Logging and Fishing with 467 cases. For death cases investigated, Construction sector reported the highest number of cases with 62 cases on 2009 and 66 cases on 2010, followed by manufacturing with 53 cases on 2009 and 59 cases on 2010.

After it seems like it is everything has been stated, said and done, why statistically still shown the increasing number of accidents? With multi-national workforce in our country, it’s not an easy task to minimize the number of accident. Personal Protective Equipment seems to be the last resort in hierarchy of control but to some extent, yes it does save lives. For example, working at height exposed workers to falling from height. With safety harness, the effect can be minimizing from death to minor injuries but at certain level where hazard are beyond the control of PPE, it might not help. Noted that accident is an unwanted situation that can happen when every single prevention step has been done and at the time when we are most careful and sometimes the last resort of control can be most effective, not in term of prevention but saving lives. It is always a wise choice to wear PPE provided as stated in section 24(c) OSHA 1994. Start to wear your PPE and make it as a culture at the place of work, we might never know, a simple action that we choose may save our life.