Safety-minded employers’ efforts lead to improved safety stats

Safety professionals in plants and mines around the world will tell you that a disproportionate number of injuries on the site are either directly or indirectly related to conveyor systems. Many injuries found in statistics presented by the Indian Ministry of Coal’s Annual Report[1] occur from workers coming in direct contact with a moving conveyor, which should never happen.

The good news is that the number of injuries and fatalities have dropped significantly since the introduction of early 20th century regulatory standards. [Fig.1] Regulations provide standards that can reduce health and safety incidents, but it’s the efforts of safety minded employers that lead to improved statistics. To say 100 percent of injuries can be avoided is unreasonable, but experts are of the opinion that many injuries could have been eliminated decades ago with the wider adoption of safer modern equipment designs.

The challenge for the companies is to get Production Done Safely™. With the financial benefits of safety demonstrated in reductions in downtime and the cost of operation, many companies are coming around naturally. But profit pressures that favour the lowest bid over the best solution often hamstring safety efforts.