Disability-sensitive occupational risk assessment

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of an ongoing National Institute for Research and Development in Occupational Safety “Alexandru Darabont” INCDPM project developed in collaborations with BAUM Engineering SRL that addresses the occupational safety issues related to workers with disabilities, with emphasis on disability-sensitive risk assessment. In our project we developed a method of occupational risk assessment that is disability-sensitive, in order to help employer and safety professionals. The disability-sensitive risk assessment method will identify all the risk factors in the system that can be the ultimate cause of injury and/or professional illness by means of predefined control lists and quantifying the risk based on the combination of gravity and probability of risk factor manifestation. The main steps in applying the method will be: establishment of the assessment team; description of the analysed system (workplace, installation); identification of risk factors in the system; assessment of the risks of occupational injury and illness; prioritizing risks and establishing prevention priorities; proposing prevention measures. Every step mentioned before will be disability-sensitive, taking account of individual workers’ differences and avoiding discrimination at the same time.