A Treatise on Industrial Safety, Disaster Management and Occupational Health: Nuclear, Steel, Mining, Cement, Oil & Gas, Aluminum, and Processing Industry Perspectives (In 2 Volumes)

Safety ,occupational health and disaster management together are for the first time brought in a format where they provide guidelines for the design, engineering and management for the major industries like oil and gas, steel, cement, aluminum, coal and nuclear power ,construction ,mining and metallurgical plants. As the integration in engineering and management of different core industries is taking place, as part of industrial evolution, it is now important to see them in a holistic manner .These two volumes bring in the mix of the conventional and evolutionary tracks of safety, workplace health and disaster management for the safekeeping of the industry. The topics include: human and organizational biases, causes, consequences, factors, learning, prevention, risk assessment, occupational health, reporting and many others. Also included are the appendices that provide list of facilities for workers’ health and safety measurement and reporting standards, and Fukushima plant’s disaster report that bolster the theory that negligence and lack of preparedness and routine cause maximum avoidable accidents and disasters. This book in 2 volumes has been developed to make the industries safe, safety conscious and ethical in treatment.

In the last few decades’ industrial safety, workers’ health and disaster management have been getting increasing attention due to myriad of reasons: some because of systemic and engineering deficiencies, some because of increasing incidences of human error, or some because of lack of or diffused responsibility in the workplace. As the speedy execution for improved efficiency has been the buzzword in all industries, industrial safety has been a casualty. With contract workers entering into the general workforce in increasing number their welfare have been at stake-thus increasingly their vulnerability to accidents and injury, and even leading to disaster. While at one time there was a dominant thinking that improved engineering can help improve safety, today human errors that give rise to avoidable accidents and disasters are in great focus. Much after the damning reports of human negligence in the case of Fukushima Nuclear disaster, or crash that led to the loss of an Air France flight over the Atlantic in June 2009 and the deaths of 228 people, that are attributed to Airbus A330’s ergonomics, technical failure and human error. So aspects of safety and disaster can not be touted as a developing or under-developed world’s problem, it is still as much a developed world’s problem. The underpinning is that dynamics of safety, occupational health and disasters are such that constant vigil, training, ethical treatment and application have to be made part of the systems and engineering on a continuous basis. Further, in most parts of the world industrial accidents involve the poor and disenfranchised people who for economic reasons take up unsafe jobs. In the recent years , the risk of these accidents have increased manifold due to media pressure, stoppage of work and the demands for compensation –all jeopardizing reputation and enforcing loss of license, protracted litigation and huge cost. In all kinds of organizations, safety preparedness can no longer be externalized , can no longer be considered as mere cost, but has to be internalized, integrated and should be taken as investment ahead of cost. The two volumes of the book try to put together the latest developments in safety, occupational health and disaster management taking place around the world and across the major industries.