ROLES OF ENGINEERS TO SAFETY AND HEALTH

OSHA standards, onsite inspections, and penalties have encouraged a greater commitment to safety and health. Engineers can make a significant contribution to safety and health. Respectively, they can cause accidents unintentionally or through incompetence that cause in serious injury and property damage. The engineer has more potential to affect safety in the workplace than any other person does. For example, a poorly designed seatbelt fitted in 1,000 automobiles will accidentally threaten the lives of as many as 4,000 people if there are four passengers per automobile. The engineers chance for both good and bad comes during the design process. The process is basically the same either 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 involved in design are usually in the aerospace, electrical, mechanical, and nuclear fields.

Safety and health are the most important to be well managed in industries to reduce indirect cost. The job scope can be referred as Safety engineer or Environmental engineer. Safety engineers ensure the well-being of people and property. These professionals combine knowledge of an engineering discipline, as well as health or safety regulations related to their discipline to keep work environments, building and people safe from harm. The work of safety engineer helps their employers lower costs of insurance and comply with laws and regulations related to health and safety. 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 and fire related accidents. In the industrial field they ensure manufacturing equipment and facilities are safe while those who work in the occupational safety discipline ensure work environments are safe for employees. Product safety engineers help with the design of products and investigate problems with products to ensure they are safe to use.

Those who work in the environmental safety discipline inspect and improve things such as air and water quality. Safety engineers develop policies to ensure safety of an environment, its customers and employees. They inspect equipment, environments and buildings to identify areas that can potentially cause health and safety hazards. Safety engineers stay up to date to new laws and regulations regarding health and safety, and make the appropriate changes for their employer. They also investigate accidents and injuries, and then endorse enhancements to safety policies and programs. 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. As conclusion, health and safety engineers develop procedures and design systems to avoid people from getting sick or injured and to keep property from being damaged. They combine knowledge of systems engineering and of health and safety to make sure that chemicals, machinery, software, furniture, and other consumer products will not cause harm to people or buildings.

Reference1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_engineer2. https://attachment.fbsbx.com/file_download.php?id=1379910782315861&eid=AStAAqSlYeXv9ZA-i40YY_XwNTR65Mqf5UHvAPcKt-wKFeB17gBIoN14JLagybQEkaY&inline=1&ext=1431788294&hash=AStO_sN6X_A2X7LV3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v0JKkwsOmM&feature=youtu.be4. http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/health-and-safety-engineers.htm