Occupation Health and Safety: Z10 Standards Implementation Report

This report examines the challenges and strategies for implementing Z10 standards in occupational health and safety, particularly within the manufacturing sector. It addresses the perceived high costs associated with Z10 implementation and proposes solutions such as safety designing and process redesigning to reduce these costs. The report emphasizes the importance of the ALARP (As Low As Reasonably Practicable) concept in balancing risk and benefits, detailing how organizations can use it to assess and manage risks, considering factors like worker compensation and the risk of lawsuits. It further explores section 5 of ANSI/AIHA Z10, focusing on management leadership and employee participation in hazard identification and risk reduction. The report also shares a personal experience of implementing safety plans based on elimination, substitution, engineering, and warnings. Finally, it discusses the concepts of acceptable and zero risk in the workplace, highlighting that while zero risk is often unattainable, it should remain a goal, with minimum risks being achieved through realistic hazard management.

Running head: OCCUPATION HEALTH AND SAFETY
Occupation health and safety
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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1. The perceived added costs are the biggest roadblock in the implementation of Z10
standards in the manufacturing sector. To overcome this, safety designing can aid in
ensuring a safe final product and process redesigning. This can help to overcome and
drastically cover up designing of costs. The manufacturing of equipments can be very
expensive for replacing or retrofitting and added costs bring equipments Z10 standards
impacting bottom line. To overcome this roadblock, Z10 implementation can help to
reduce serious injury and cost savings in workers or insurance compensation potentially
help to make up for perceived added costs (Manuele 2014).
2. The ALARP concept (As Low As Reasonably Practicable) concept can be used for
balancing risk as well as benefits. It can be stated that for an acceptable risk, it can
measured against severity and probability of an injury. In this case, if the risk is highly
significant or in cases it is greatly determined as per worth, the organization can help to
implement this concept for safety processes. Workers compensation, risk of lawsuit and
injury recurrence is the factors that are greatly weighted by organization managers in
decision making process. ALARP is used to demonstrate that involved cost is used to
reduce further risk that would be engaged as grossly disproportionate as compared to the
benefit gained. This depicts that this concept is a common judgment practice that help to
balance societal benefit and risk. Furthermore, this concept can be used as an attribute for
legislation goal-setting as compared to prescriptive one. In the former one, duty holder or
employer is greatly responsible for demonstrating to the regulator that personnel risk is
ALARP (Manuele 2017).
3. The section 5 of ANSI/AIHA Z10 deals with the ‘Implementation and Operation’ that
states Management Leadership and Employee Participation. This section explains the

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operation of organizations that can help in assessment of risks that is greatly involved
with operations. The identification of hazards is vital for the reduction of injuries and this
hazard analysis is offered by managers and employees who guide in the prevention of
injury. For this significant step, leadership of management is required and active
employee participation (Rasmuson et al. 2015).
While reflecting on my own experience, I was assigned with my senior manager
for reducing injury at the organization. I took an active participation in the task with the
help of my senior. I made a proper planning and assigned work as per hierarchy levels.
There was designing of plans based on four basic steps:
Elimination: This step was planned for the elimination of process.
Substitution: In this step, there was less use of hazardous materials to reduce injury.
Engineering: There was utilization of controls that helped to reduce the injury chances
and control risk.
Warnings: In this step, employee education and training was provided for risk reduction.
4. Accepted level of hazards can be determined as the level of human as well as property
loss which h is tolerable by an individual, organisation, group, region, state, community
or even nation. In case of business and management, accepted levels of hazard can be
considered as the overall exposure to hazards which can be accepted depending upon the
costs and benefits involved. Once the concerned authority sets the acceptable levels of
hazards, a hazard management team can be appointed with the task of ensuring that no
hazards cross the established level. In case of fire-fighters, the accepted level of risk is

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directly related to the different types of potential benefits that remain associated with
saving property or lives. The fire-fighter should always evaluate the risk and accept the
degrees of risk where they are not risking a lot to save a little. For them, acceptable risks
are those in which positive benefits are having a much greater value than the negative
possibilities which are posed by the risk. Zero risk is those instances where no risks
remain associated with tasks and activities. Researchers suggest that in real work
attaining zero risk is not possible. Safety practitioners should therefore accept the fact
that zero risk is not attainable for hazards which are not possible to be eliminated (Parker
and Frape 2017). However, attaining zero risk should be the legitimate goal of every
organisation. Minimum risks are achieved when all risks that are deriving from the
hazards are present at a realistic minimum. It does n ot mean zero risk that is not possible
to achieve. Acceptable risks can be defined as the levl of human or material injury or
even loss from various industrial process which is considered to be acceptable or
tolerable by authorities or even socities in view of economic, social and political cost-
benefit analysis.

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References
Manuele, F.A., 2014. ANSI/AIHA/ASSE Z10-2012 an overview of the occupational health &
safety management systems standard. Professional Safety, 59(4), p.44.
Manuele, F.A., 2017. Highly Unusual: CSB's Comments Signal Long-Term Effects on the
Practice of Safety. Professional Safety, 62(4), p.26.
Parker, G. and Frape, J., 2017, January. Getting the OSH Professional’s Voice Heard:
Communicating Clearly about Acceptable Risk. In ASSE Professional Development Conference
and Exposition. American Society of Safety Engineers.
Rasmuson, E., Korchevskiy, A., Duane, A., Haugh, A. and Funk, S., 2015, July. Development of
the Three-Dimensional Hazard and Risk Assessment Methodology for Health and Safety
Management Systems in Petroleum Industry. In SPE Latin American and Caribbean Health,
Safety, Environment and Sustainability Conference. Society of Petroleum Engineers.