Australasian Mining Review
Issue link: http://ebook.aprs.com.au/i/37922
191 The permanently impaired neglected in our quest for Zero Harm 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. The pattern of permanent impairment in the mining industry has not changed since the 1990s. Human Energy, Gravitational Energy and Vehicle Energy must be understood and appropriately managed if we are to realise zero permanent impairments in mining. 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 P , 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% of the occurrences reported, contributed the majority of costs with Class I non-fatal occurrences contributing between 80-90% 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% of all costs and the permanent impairments contributed 88% of all costs. Class II contributed 8.7% 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 than economic costs such as pain and suffering, social costs, family costs and sovereign risk the same conclusion is drawn. The minority of incidents (Class I) contributes the majority of costs / burden. Fatal outcomes present sovereign risk and must be managed but non-fatal permanent impairment presents the majority of costs / burden. Occupational Health & Safety is essentially a Class I problem. And yet Governments and organisations across Australia focus on fatalities and LTIs as measures of success. Most LTIs are short term Class II occurrences. The permanently impaired, who may never miss a day of work and a fewer in number are potentially forgotten. It is possible to have a reducing LTIFR but be permanently disabling more people than ever before. Any organisation effectively managing OH&S will attempt to understand what produces Class I damage and adopt control strategies that effectively manage those exposures. Phillip Byard is a Senior Consultant and Training Manager for InterSafe. 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 ersonal 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). 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. It is desirable to capture and report damaging occurrences by the degree of impairment and not by the number of days that a person did not attend work. The majority of cases in these datasets are short duration lost time with full recovery (Class II). Research into the pattern of personal damage by the author’s organisation has revealed that the pattern for fatal outcomes is not the same as the pattern for any other kind of damage. The pattern of what kills many people in mining at one time is not the same as the pattern of what kills one person at a time is not the same as the pattern of what produces permanent impairment or a fi rst aid treatment. The pattern for long duration claims is, however, very similar to the pattern for permanent impairment / disability. There are some differences. The pattern of short duration claims is, however, 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%) of cases with Gravitational Energy (people falling, objects falling) the next most prevalent (32%). Machine Energy contributed 254 cases (21%). The majority of Machine Energy cases were heavy equipment jolt / jar / vibration. Ninety three per cent of all occurrences resulted from just three of the possible 14 damaging energies. 95% 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. OH&S is a Class I problem. It is also a Human, Gravity and Vehicle problem for permanent impairments. A more recent analysis has been conducted by the author’s organisation. Figure 2 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 [OH&S and Risk Management Systems and Training] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ issue 2.2