Except for professional enthusiasts, the subject of worker health and safety is often considered boring. Indeed it has become a joke amongst the ‘chattering classes’ in reaction to over-careful authorities concerned about legal claims or hiked insurance premiums. And yet, in tunnelling it is a very real issue that should concern everyone.
The human factor, including both management and worker attitudes, is especially important in the working environment. Tunnelling can viewed as the meeting of the overly macho attitude of much of the construction industry (the ‘it will never happen to me’ approach) with the instinctive hazard awareness of the well-trained miner.
It was once, and often still is, the attitude of construction management that each worker is responsible for his or her safety and that of others. This is true of course, but it is not enough.
Some hazards should be obvious to any healthy aware worker – moving machinery, hanging rocks, and obstruction under foot for example. Adequate training should increase awareness of such everyday threats to safety. Other physical threats may not be obvious until an emergency arises, such as inadequate egress routes or ventilation in the event of a fire. In these circumstances it is the safe system of work that needs to be established by project management that plays the major role. Some additional hazards occurring only in an emergency may have note been recognised yet.
Can, for example, the smoke and fumes generated in the fire during tunnelling be adequately handled or prevented from harming workers? T&TI would be interested to hear your views too, especially about how such situations can be managed safely.
However aware a tunneller is, he cannot be held responsible for circumstances beyond his control. The design of safety into equipment, and making sure that safety keeps up with production technology, is vitally important. This is recognised in the establishment of frequently revised machinery standards such as the new CEN standards.
Yet more hazards are virtually invisible and may only affect lives in the long term. So, all concerned should be made aware of them by training and warnings, including the precautions necessary to minimise or eliminate their effects, whether fatal or debilitating. Such hazards, often ignored, usually come under the heading of occupational health, and have often been reviewed in presentations by Donald Lamont.
Virtually any hazard found in tunneling can be greatly reduced by the correct use of technology and design, from controlling working methods to providing the best working environment possible, and from guarding machinery to testing for gases and dust.
Safety and health are much more than watching where you go, providing personal protective equipment, and a conversational joke. Inadequate alertness to what could happen can damage, or remove, lives, long after one careless action.
