Workplace Related Accidents and How to Prevent Them

¶ … falling death of a female minor at a rooftop construction site was the result of a lack of safety oversight and precautionary intervention. The owner of the company was present at the site at the time of death but had provided no safety equipment or guidelines to the minor. Legally, she was prohibited from being in the hazardous environment because she was under 18. A safety professional could have helped prevent the incident by recommending safe work practices. This paper provides a summary of the NIOSH report, what was lost in terms of cost (a life), what factors contributed to it, and how it could have been prevented. It concludes with a discussion on how safety professionals can be an effective workplace task force in companies like this one where oversight is sorely needed in order to mitigate risks associate with hazardous environments where loss of life could occur.

NIOSH Report

In 2007, a 17-year-old female worker fell 26 feet from the roof of a residential dwelling. Her employer was tasked with replacing the roof and she had been with the owner of the company on the roof. After stacking shingles on a wooden plank, the female worker sat on the plank. From there she fell to the stone patio below. She was airlifted to a hospital but remained in critical condition for 9 days until she died from her severe head injuries.

Her fatality was the only injury/loss of life in this report. The cost of the death was significant in terms of human life. From a social perspective, the death of this underage worker corresponds with the goal of YouthRules! -- a website launched by the U.S. government in order to raise awareness among young workers about how to protect themselves in work zones that are potentially dangerous. The lack of oversight by the owner of the construction/roofing company and the inattention to safety requirements regarding workers under the age of 18 (she should not have been on the roof with the workers) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration "requires that all workers be protected against falling while working at an elevation," a requirement which was not adhered to in this particular case; the girl wore no safety harness and no protective equipment was below on the ground to help break a fall if one should occur at the site (NIOSH, 2009).

Thus, the hazards that contributed to the incident were the girl's age (she was under the appropriate age to be working on the roof, according to the Fair Labor Standards Act, which prohibits minors from Hazardous Orders (NIOSH, 2009). The owner had also provided no safety guidelines for workers or safety equipment for the minor. For this reason, the contributing factors to the girl's death were two-fold: "the failure to recognize and control the fall hazard," and "the assignment of a young worker to a prohibited hazardous task" (NIOSH, 2009).

According to the Four M's, identified by Brauer (2016), the forces involved in this workplace incident pertain to "man, media, machine and management." Whereas media in this case is thought of as the environment, the interrelated factors that contributed to this accident were the individual involved (she was not properly equipped or of age to be on a roof), the environment (it was a particularly hazardous environment, 26 feet above ground), machine (on top of a roof, attempting to get off a plank without proper safety equipment), and management (the owners had not bothered with proper or effective safety protocol, as ordered by law or by sound business and safety practices and guidelines).

The Accident/Incident Theory model, which builds on the Human Factors Incident model, identifies other contributing factors, such as the decision to error and the Superman Syndrome (the "it won't happen to me" mistake), which is evident in the girl's risky behavior by sitting on the wooden beam without safety gear and in the management's lack of responsibility in taking proper safety precautions. System Failure is also a causal variable in the Accident/Incident Theory model, and it relates to the failure of management to properly make safety decisions (Penney, 2015). In this case, there was clear evidence of System Failure as management had not produced any documents on safety guidelines or followed protocol on not allowing minors on the roof.

The incident could have been prevented in a number of ways. First, by applying the Accident/Incident model, System Failure could have been avoided had management simply taken the time to produce an effective and adequate safety guideline for workers and ensured that all follow it as standard operating procedure. This in the very least would have ensured that safety material was in place in case a fall from the roof did occur. It would have ensured that safety harnesses were in use at all times by workers, which would have prevented a fall. And it should have prevented the minor from being on the rooftop in the first place. This concept correlates with the fourth M of the Four M's model as well: management contributed to the incident by not properly preparing the site for any possible risks.

Likewise, education about the Superman fallacy should have been given during training and this may have prevented the girl from taking such dangerous risks as being on the roof or attempting to get down from a beam without assistance or support. The environment was hazardous and should have been off limits to the minor, which corresponds with the media portion of the Four M's. The machine involved was roofing equipment and it was not adequately prepared for safety concerns and thus the machine could have better helped prevent the fall by being harnessed with fall-breaking equipment on the ground below the roof, which would have seriously reduced the level of risk associated with the machine. The man, in this case, was a young woman, underage, and without adequate safety gear -- and thus essentially unprotected and unsupervised. This could have been prevented, first, by keeping her on the ground, and second by her own common sense, had it been educated about work-related safety through such sites as YouthRules!

Hazard control as a primary role and responsibility of today's safety professional is essential in the work-related world. So many potentially dangerous situations can arise that people are not adequately prepared for either because of inattention or gross negligence. Safety professionals can ensure that situations are up to par in terms of meeting safety requirements and they can give attention to those items that management or owners might otherwise overlook. Owners do not always give attention to every piece of work-related issue that comes up; they have persons who oversee budgets, hiring, prep work, ordering, etc. Thus, there should also be an individual on staff who is in charge of overseeing safety. This would ensure that many risks are mitigated and loss of life and costs kept to a minimum.