When working, health and well-being are important, therefore unhealthy conditions and occupational risk must be minimized
Who could work in a place that has not been cleaned in a month? Or who would be able to work in an office without the proper light? The answer to these and many more questions that have to do with occupational hygiene and safety is obvious: nobody
This article, therefore, will deal with those activities important for the maintenance of the physical and psychological conditions of personnel within a company.
Occupational hygiene
When carrying out any activity, it is very important to always protect our physical and mental integrity, taking great care of the health risks inherent in the activity that we are carrying out and in the physical environment where we are executing it. These are the fundamental principles regarding occupational hygiene that is also related to disease prevention from the study of 2 variables: man and his work environment.
For a long time, the hygiene and safety of the workplace have been important factors for the proper functioning of a company; In most of these, an organized plan is involved, which involves the provision of medical, nursing and first aid services. These are provided both within the company and in specialized medical centers, according to the characteristics of the organization.
Likewise, companies differ in their operation; The hygiene and safety system of a car factory is not the same as that of a company that only has offices.
It is very important to highlight that occupational hygiene is preventive in nature, since it addresses the health and comfort of a worker, preventing them from becoming ill or partially or totally absent from their workplace. To achieve this, workers, bosses or foremen can be educated by pointing out the existing dangers and teaching them how to avoid them; also maintaining a state of alert to the existing risks in a factory.
Another point of great importance is the work environment which is determined by the environmental conditions (noise, temperature, lighting, etc.); the weather conditions (working hours, overtime, rest periods, etc.); and by social conditions (informal organization, status, etc.)
Within the environmental conditions, the most important is the lighting of the workplace, that is, the amount of light at the point where the activity is taking place and will depend on the visual task that the employee must perform. This is of utmost importance because we remember that poor lighting can affect sight as well as nerves.
Another very important factor is noise. How many times when passing through a metallurgical company we do not hear infernal sounds? In this regard, the main thing is to determine how noise affects the employee's health and hearing, which is lost the longer the exposure time is. The unpleasant effect of noise depends on the intensity and frequency of the sound and the variation of the rhythms.
Occupational hygiene focuses on both people and environmental working conditions, i.e. lighting, noise and atmospheric conditions
Work safety
We are going to define it as the set of measures used to eliminate unsafe conditions in the work environment, educating people about the need to implement preventive practices.
It is very important to clarify that security is a staff function, that is, there is an external body that advises all areas in terms of security and covers 3 main areas of activity that are accident, theft and fire prevention..
As a final reflection, we can say that having a healthy environment and good security conditions, it will be possible to work in a better way without feeling fear for our physical or intellectual integrity that makes our performance not adequate.
