The Historical “Dumbing Down” of the Safety Profession!

December 17, 2022 No Comments

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asse engineers.  engineers focusing on hazard recognition and control largely through engineering out the hazard.

mid 1960’s weaver, convinced other college majors should be allowed in too.  WC definitions expanded to include cummulative trauma disorders ,  bad back, cts, etc that may have been aggrivated by work, but many probably congenital or non-work related.

as the wc claims changed from workplace hazard injuries, to phantom illnesses alllegely caused by simply doing long term work.

Add to it claims from vehicles accidents and crimes (robberies, abuse) and you have the majority of claims now in many industries being non-injuries.

Also, during the 70’s and 80’s , OSHA came into being.   Simplied and codified safety and health.   Every needed to know found in one book.   This one book applied to all industries.   goal now now preventing accidents, rather compliance, many of whose requirements had nothing to do with preventing the most prevalent and likely injuries illnesses and catastrophies to employees in your industry.

With this shift, the practice of safety shifted from workplace hazard elimination to training.   Many companies moved their safety dept from engineering/ operations to HR.    Under HR, the HR directors not understanding hazard and engineering principles, tended to hire s professionals who thought like them and believed training, hiring/screening/signs/ anti drugs/motivation the keys.   Hired professionals who had no engineering or technical degrees.   Often liberal arts who didn’t understand Ohms law, the right hand rule of electrical fields, or the funda;mentals of chemistry.

The flight of manufactureing. lead to further decrease in need for engineers and their emphasis on hazard recognition.

CSP.   promisiing.   Title protection.    Yet osha never did require a csp for any of their regs.  search osha. gove for csp,   no responses.     Why not csp sign off on new factory plans or any plant change over $25,000?    Why no csp approve, major entries into highly hazardous confined spaces?  Why no csp required to approve safety programs for high hazard industires?   total failure,   was csp since mid 70’s,   sensed more interested in collecting dues, building new fancy headquarters,  growing staff, empire building than genuinely promoting the csp designation.   to this day, the majority of executives I speak with in heavy industry have never heard of the csp designation.

The ASSE,  decades, recently changed name to assp to reflect few were engineers, and most either non technical degrees or no degree at all. just successful completion of the osha 30 hour couse.

When went into profession in 1973, proud.   most highly intellegent engineers.    disciplined,  .    seen slow decay to what it is today, a nontechnical profession that more aking to a trade or vocation.

 

 

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