subject: Cost Of Safety [print this page] Uhl T. Mann and Guy E. Griffin, Journal (Water Pollution Control Federation) Vol. 36
It is not comfortable to evaluate the cost of setting up and maintaining a course for safety, for the reason that this cost ought to include the expenditure of time and energy directed to the requirement of being constantly alert and prepared for hazard calculating situations and committing safe procedures in response. Nor can the returns be measured straightforwardly in dollars and cents. What is the quantity of a life? What is the quantity of preventing lost-time accidents? What is the quantity of a cessation of full-scale operations? What property damage can be possibly prevented?
The cost of life is an unpretentious carry matter for an insurance company to calculate from life expectancy tables, and from earning capacity, the anticipated income of a client. They cannot foretell, however, what investment or else use the client would make of said income nor can they predict with every reasonable gauge what quantity a jury will place leading a life which is suddenly and needlessly removed. The superlative evaluation of that is a reconsidered grouping of judgments given and to realize that they run from $50,000 to $700,000 dollars. Too often, the loss of life is the consequence of disregarding instructions in favor of safe procedures and failing to use the on-hand safety equipment.
A good example of this would be a few weeks ago when a foreman of a sewer maintenance crew made the decision to inspect on his way to his house, using his personal car for transportation, a connection being made by a contractor to a 72-inch (183-cm) diameter region trunk sewer. A contractor's employee had entered a manhole in the trunk sewer with no benefit of previously testing the sewers atmosphere and with no benefit of a lifeline in order to plaster mortar around the fresh connection. It is reported that the county's maintenance employee witnessed from the ground that the worker did not feel well and had descended into the sewer with a rope to tie around the worker. He had neglected to provide a rope for himself. A passerby in addition descended into the trunk sewer to assist the maintenance employee. With the help of others by the side of the top, the manual worker was pulled out of the manhole and barely escaped asphyxiation.
A selection of items of safety equipment items are recommended to determine and uphold safe conditions inside working areas, whether it be present in the sphere of a sewer manhole, pump suction well, or any other dangerous locations. The Division of Sewers of the region of Westchester, N. Y., provides its maintenance crews with the following equipmentat the cost indicated: (a) H2S trying ampoules (10 to a package), $1; (b) Test lamp in favor of air deficiency, $67; (c) Explosimeter, $100; (d) two safety harnesses lanyards, both with 25 ft (7.5 m) of nylon rope, $18 both; (e) Engine-driven portable blower with canvass water, $280; (f) Hand-driven portable blower with rubber air water and mask, $565; and (g) Mask and compressed air cylinder back-pack, $215.
