Application of Safety Program to Water Works Industry

Abstract

that the gas and electric utilities, and perhaps the communication utilities as well, are potentially more hazardous for employees than are water utilities. Also, it is expected that the accident frequency and severity rates for these three utilities would clearly demonstrate this relationship. No doubt this relative safety was true some years ago, but not today. The gas, electric, and communication utilities recognized the detrimental effects of accidents on production . and on the morale of personnel, and decided to do something about it. They instituted safety programs which brought immediate and startling results. They proved that safety was a sound business activity. The National Safety Council supplied the data on accident rates, both for frequency and severity, which are given in Table 1. One glance at the rates will convince the most skeptical person that safety is good business. To make the data in Table 1. intelligible, frequency and severity ra|es must be defined. Frequency is expressed as the number of disabling in^ juries sustained for each 1,000,000 man-hours of work. A disabling accident is defined as one in which the injured worker is unable to return to work on the day following the accident. Thus, if he reports to work at any time on the day following the accident, no lost-time accident is recorded. In contrast, the severity rate is based on days lost for each 1,000 man-hours of work.