Perception is relative.
And oftentimes, history adds context to perception.
The perception we have is that yes, there are fewer incidents in our workplaces, even as we have many more workers than 40, 50, or even 100 years ago. Over the last century, the number of work-related deaths has dropped by 75 percent while the working population has doubled.
That means that really deadly incidents at work sites have been fewer and more far between than before, much to the credit of our safety officers and companies’ and government’s commitment to providing safe workplaces and safe work habits.
The perception in terms of history is that workers are much safer than they were decades ago, and there is still improvement. But if you ignore history and look at the current situation in the context of a snapshot, you will see that it seems that a higher percentage of incidents are resulting in deaths and significant injuries.
A Two-way Mirror
Both perceptions are right.
As was mentioned in my first post in this series, we have much to be proud of in terms of the lower number of deaths and the great reduction in workplace incidents over the last century, especially over the last 40 years. But no matter which way you look in that mirror, the reflection comes back that yeah, the body is stronger and healthier than it was, but there is still work to be done.
Safety consultant James Loud wrote a key article in a recent issue of Professional Safety magazine that addresses the current reality that the workplace incidents that are happening now have a much higher probability of being fatal than a few decades ago.
Loud wrote the article in an attempt to answer three tough questions – at least, questions which may have answers that may be tough to accept.
The focus of the article is to understand the reality of these high-risk incidents and perhaps get us all to think differently about safety – that perhaps thinking about reducing the number of incidents at a worksite might be inadequate in addressing the fundamental issue of keeping workers alive and safe.
3 Examples
To help begin the process of answering the three main questions in Loud’s article, he utilizes the power of three to bring up three well-publicized workplace incidents that led to multiple fatalities. We’ll summarize each one here, then we’ll look at the common link between them, even though these incidents were very different from each other in terms of their causes.
First up is a 2005 BP refinery explosion in Texas City that killed 15 people and injured at least 200. This case was just dripping with irony, as the explosion occurred after a good number of the workers had just returned to work following a celebration of the refinery’s safety record. Before the explosion, the refinery has a reportable incident rate that was about one-third of the average for the industry. How does such an event happen at a place with a world-class safety reputation?
Turns out, as an assessment of the workplace was conducted following the explosion, the explosion was an “odds are” example – that it was bound to happen eventually because of negligence in safety protocols; adopting protocols that were unrealistic; maintenance efforts being delayed on equipment where safety was critical; an emphasis on productivity over safety, and a seeming willful ignorance of high risk (in other words, it was a longstanding culture at the refinery).
Many of us remember the Deepwater Horizon oil platform explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Another BP entity (coincidentally? More on that in a second), the explosion killed 11 people on the platform and caused the largest-ever accidental oil spill, which has since cost BP at least $50 billion in fines and cleanup expenses.
What was revealed in the investigation afterward? More delicious irony – several top company officers of both BP and platform operator Transocean were on the platform at the time of the explosion, recognizing the workers for their great safety record. But in reality, there were failures that seemed to trace back more than 10 or 20 years, becoming embedded as a cultural phenomenon. The platform was playing Russian roulette for years, and in 2010 found the one bullet.
The third case study that Loud referenced was a 2014 incident at a DuPont plant in LaPorte, Texas, where chemical exposure killed four workers. DuPont was another company that had a sterling reputation for safety dating back many years, and in fact was given a top award for safety by the National Safety Council in 2013, a year before this incident.
What was found in this subsequent investigation was enough that the award-winning safety hero DuPont got placed into the OSHA severe violator enforcement program (what amounts to probation and extensive oversight) due to what were called “a broken safety culture” (the use of the word “culture” is especially painful) and a company that “demonstrate
4 Common Threads
While these incidents are all in different locations at different times and had differing circumstances that caused each incident, the 30 total deaths all did have at least four things in common, having to do with the workplace environment, which of course is ironic considering the supposed stellar safety records of the two companies involved in these incidents.
- The incident rates at each site was far lower than than at similar sites for other companies.
- Each received major company and industry awards for safety records in the years prior to the incidents.
- All of them had safety protocols that were primarily focused on workers haveing safe behaviors on the work site.
- Each had a history of neglected risks that the companies either ignored or failed to adequately address, and they all came together in a “perfect storm” with their respective incidents.
These are just three of the most widely known incidents, but they are not outliers, at least in the United States. While the overall number of incidents has decreased dramatically over the decades, there is still a very high risk that the incidents that do occur will result in significant injuries and/or deaths.
We’re reducing the quantity of incidents, but we’re increasing the quality of incidents.
So how did we get to this point, especially in the U.S., which has a much higher rate of deadly incidents than virtually any other developed country?
Next up, we’ll take a look at more of Loud’s article, when he has a brief discussion about three well-known safety “pioneers” and how their influences are still being felt and acknowledged today just as they were in their heydays.