Occupational risk assessment based on employees’ knowledge and awareness of hazards in mining

Abstract

Analyses and assessments of hazards occurring in work processes are carried out by teams, in which there is usually one representative of the personnel, as the embodiment of the active participation of employees in the assessment of occupational risks. This is why the article presents research on all employees’ knowledge and awareness about risks in their work environment. The research was carried out in the form of an employee survey in one of the open-pit mines, at workstations dealing with the loading and transporting of excavated material. The survey included a list of 40 hazards divided into four groups: (1) hazards related to machines and equipment used, (2) hazards related to exposure, (3) hazards with an impact extending beyond the workstation and (4) hazards of an ergonomic nuisance nature, where employees were required to indicate which hazards apply to their workplaces and determine their level of significance, probability of occurrence and the scale of possible effects. In this way, a hierarchical identification of threats occurring at the analyzed workplaces was made, and the obtained results were used to determine the amount of occupational risk both for specific workstations and for the whole technological process. The measures of the magnitude of occupational risk obtained using the proposed method have showed that, according to the respondents, greatest risks at the workstation are associated with moving machines and vehicles and with mobile equipment. Equally important risks, which were often mentioned by employees, were those directly related to their health, i.e., related to ergonomic nuisance and exposure. Threats resulting from geological and mining conditions, considered typical for mining, were important for the surveyed miners but they were not the most important owing to proper prevention, good organization of work and high safety culture The active involvement of the crew in the process of assessing occupational hazards allowed to identify the significance of each hazard, in the opinion of the personnel working at various places and to use this ranking for determining occupational risk levels in the mining company concerned. The research has also outlined another goal to be achieved: a comparison of the relative significance of hazards identified by the employees and of the hazards listed in occupational risk assessment matrices used by mines.