Health hazards, risk and safety practices in construction sites – a review study

Abstract

This review attempts to identify the health hazards, risks and causes of poor safety practices in construction sites. In addition, the differences in safety practices in both developed and developing countries and methods to improve construction site safety are discussed. Effects of some health hazards are chronic while some are acute. Mostly reported acute health hazards are "workers fall from height" and "electric shocks", while mostly reported chronic health hazard is "exposure to hazardous substances". Lack of awareness about site safety and dislike to wear Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) were identified as main causes of poor safety practices in construction sites. One of the major needs with regard to the construction industry is to enhance professionals' interests in active safety management and implementation of awareness programs, which must be developed and implemented among construction workers. Awareness on possible risk factors and knowledge on how to reduce these risk factors among workers and contractors will enhance site safety.

The Level of Competency Knowledge in Safety Training among Construction Personnel

“…Construction personnel were not aware of the fact that noise and vibration can cause harm as 42.5% gave correct answer. It was put forth by Vitharana, De Silva and De Silva (2015) that construction personnel need not only trainings but also actions in ensuring workers to use PPE when working in sites with high noise and vibration exposure. Vibration and noise produced from various activities on site would also be hazardous when workers are exposed to the situation too much leading to various health hazards such as hearing impairment.…”

Effectiveness of Virtual Reality Technology to teach Gen Z students about Construction Safety: A Pilot Study

“…However, it requires involvement from all stakeholders, including workers, construction companies, owners, designers, regulators and educators [4]. Research has shown that a lack of proactive and preventive measures such as workforce training, risk source identification and control, safety awareness and education have considerable influence in controlling risk and safety on site [5]. Given all these facts, teaching safety to experienced workers remains a challenge, which magnifies when it comes to teaching GenerationZ (GenZ) students about construction safety, as most of them lack the vital experience of working in a construction site.…”

Application of Fuzzy DEMATEL Method for Analyzing Occupational Risks on Construction Sites

“…(2) Decision is made about the strengths and weaknesses of a recent safety program using a safety audit, which is part of the company's safety program [29]. (3) Injury rate of recurrence, which is the number of lost-time injuries per million hours worked and assumed as a method of evaluating safety performance, is computed [30,31].…”

“…(3) A normalized direct relation matrix is built on the basis of direct relation matrix using Equation (2).…”

“…The amount of work accidents and injuries has been increasing drastically for years in construction industry. This occurs because the construction industry comprises higher percentage of self-employed workers, and large number of seasonal and migrant workers [2]. Hence, the importance of accident and injury prevention, which requires a knowledge of accidents' causal factors and how the factors increase the probability of risks that can cause accidents, has arisen [3,4].…”