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PERMANENT DISABILITY INJURIES IVE VEHICLE OPERATORS A SMOOTH RIDE For zero harm to be achieved we must give vehicle operators a smooth ride, and where unacceptable exposures exist it is necessary to implement a suite of control measures, writes Phillip Byard. Permanent injury or disease sustained by Australian workers comprises a huge burden. Fatality or permanent impairment is a signifi cant issue for every industry including the mining industry. Whole body vibration (WBV) is considered a signifi cant contributor to the permanent impairment problem which has been recognised for decades. WBV requires a suite of interventions to be appropriately managed in the work place. Current commercially available seats do not provide signifi cant protection for operators of heavy mining vehicles. Regular vibration monitoring, with evaluation against standards for whole body vibration, is necessary to quantify the extent to which operating vehicles is damaging operators. Operation and maintenance managers must become sensitised to the phenomena of jolt / jar and vibration with priority given to road and vehicle maintenance above production pressures for WBV to be effectively managed into the future. Personal Damage (injury or disease) can be usefully classifi ed as Class I (permanent alteration of life), Class II (temporary alteration of life with full recovery), or Class III (minor irritation). Class I includes fatal and non-fatal (permanent impairment). There have been three snapshots of damage to people from work in Australia, published by the Industry Commission (1995)1 , the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission (NOHSC 2004)2 and the Australian Safety and Compensation Council (ASCC March 2009)3 . The three studies gave baseline estimates of economic costs for the years 1992-93, 2000-01 and 2005-06. The studies consistently demonstrated that Class I damage, while less than 10 per cent of the occurrences reported, contributed the majority of costs with Class I non-fatal occurrences contributing between 80-90 per cent of all costs. In 2005-2006 for example there were an estimated 2,603 fatalities and 60,000 permanent impairments. The fatalities contributed 3.3 per cent of all costs and the permanent impairments contributed 88 per cent of all costs. Class II contributed 8.7 per cent of all costs. Estimated costs associated with Class III damage is of the same order of magnitude as Class II damage. If one considers other 28 AUSTRALASIAN MINE SAFETY JOURNAL than economic costs such as pain and suffering, social costs, family costs and sovereign risk the same conclusion could be drawn. The minority of incidents (Class I) contributes the majority of costs / burden. Occupational Health & Safety is essentially a Class I problem. Any organisation effectively managing OH&S will attempt to understand what produces Class I damage and adopt control strategies that effectively manage those exposures. One valuable source of information to assist in understanding what produces Class I damage is to review industry injury statistics. The internal dataset of any organisation for fatality or permanent impairment is unlikely to be statistically signifi cant and is of little use. Near miss reports will also be predictably focussed on potentially fatal outcomes and will not focus attention on permanent impairment exposures of the workforce. Unfortunately most compensation-based datasets (including the national dataset) report occurrences not by the extent of impairment but by the number of days lost as a measure. Research into the pattern of personal damage by the author’s organisation has revealed that the pattern for long duration claims is very similar to the pattern for permanent impairment / disability. There are some differences. The pattern of short duration claims is very similar to the pattern for Class III minor damage. Any useful analysis of compensation or injury data where permanent impairment is not reported must, therefore, focus on long duration claims to give insight into the pattern of permanent impairment. Figure 14 is a taxonomic analysis by McDonald of 1,230 incidents which occurred in Queensland and New South Wales coal mines between 1990 and 1995 which resulted in more than 90 days lost time. The fi rst level taxon is based on damaging energy. Human Energy (manual handling, near falls, impact with objects) contributed the majority (40 per cent) of cases with Gravitational Energy (people falling, objects falling) the next most prevalent (32 per cent). Machine Energy contributed 254 cases (21 per cent). Ninety-three per cent of all occurrences resulted from just three of the possible 14 damaging energies. Ninety- fi ve per cent of the total reported cost was attributed to these three. It was clear then that in the 1990s any effective OH&S system within the mining industry must promote priority of focus on understanding and appropriately managing Human Energy, Gravitational Energy and Machine Energy for zero permanent impairments / disabilities to be achieved. Figure: NSW and Qld Open Cut Coal Mines (1990-1995) resulting in more than 90 days off work. Further understanding can be gained by looking to subsequent levels of breakdown in the taxonomy. For specifi cally the Machine Energy cases 207 (81 per cent) involved mobile equipment, with 14 (7 per cent) involving fi xed or portable machinery, and the balance (33 / 12 per cent) being motor vehicle road accidents. Figure 2 shows the next level of breakdown of the cases involving mobile equipment; 116 (56 per cent) of the 207 mobile equipment cases involved Vibration / Jarring. More recent analysis has been conducted by the author’s organisation. Figure 35 shows a taxonomy of 512 cases from Western Australian Mining of more than 130 days lost time for July 2003 to June 2007. This classifi cation differs from the earlier work of McDonald in that Machine Energy has been subdivided into Vehicular Energy and Machine Energy. The 2003-07 pattern is essentially the same as the 1990-95 pattern.