Health Hazards in Construction Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Health Hazards in Construction - Research Paper Example Outdoor workers face a myriad of hazards depending on the type of occupations, season, geographic location and the duration of exposure. A hazard refers to a potential for harm as documented by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA (2012). Practically, it would be an activity or condition which, if left uncontrolled could cause illness or injury. Therefore, identifying such hazards and controlling, even eliminating them in good time would be beneficial in preventing illnesses, injuries, and even deaths. To do so, a technique that focuses on the tasks related to a job so as to identify and potential hazards before their occurrence, referred by Weeks (2011) as job hazard analysis, would be undertaken. This technique evaluates the relationship between the work environment and the worker, tasks, and tools employed. Ideally, the identification of uncontrolled hazards triggers the adoption of strategies that would reduce them to acceptable risks levels or completely elimi nate them. Construction is one of the outdoor industry sectors where job hazard analysis serves a significant role. Felperin (2013) categorizes the construction industry as either governmental or private involved with the erection of buildings for commercial or habitation purposes and public works that include roads, tunnels, bridges, airports, and dams among others. Thus, the construction job entails building, repairing, maintaining, modifying, renovating or demolishing of such facilities. In industrialized countries, construction workers constitute between 5% and 10% of the total workforce and globally, 90% of these workers are male. A majority of these are unskilled laborers.