Occupational health and safety risk assesment of plastic packaging production facilities

The occupational health and safety prevent the financial and social process originating from industrial accidents and occupational diseases caused by operational environments. Besides, studies play important roles in the issues such as ; protection and promotion of workers' health, development of working capacity and skills,establishment and prosecution of safe and healthy environment for all stakeholders. Each year, considerable amount of people lose their life or become disabled due to work accidents or occupational diseases which may be prevented or are to be prevented legally. That is why risk assessment is so important, as the key to healthy workplaces. Risk assessment is a dynamic process that allows enterprises and organisations to put in place a proactive policy of managing workplace risks. For these reasons, it is important that all types and sizes of enterprise carry out regular assessments. Proper risk assessment includes, among others things, making sure that all relevant risks are taken into account (not only the immediate or obvious ones), checking the efficiency of the safety measures adopted, documenting the outcomes of the assessment and reviewing the assessment regularly to keep it updated. It is seen that the increase in occupational accidents and deaths in recent years are the results of insufficient precautions on work health and safety issues; and the desired results are not achieved by changing regulations. In order to minimize risks and their negative consequences, risk analysis is needed. Risk analysis indicates some alternatives to reduce the unfavorable outcomes. Nowadays the technology is developing day by day so that we need risk analysis more than ever. Risk analysis helps people to figure out the reasons of accidents or incidents reasons and to do that; firstly identifies hazards, then estimates risks and finally finds some ways to manage it. The occupational health and safety concept, besides preventing dangerous situations, includes predicting and considering risks, removing them off completely or minimizing their effects. On a global scale, this concept involves foreseeing hazards and deciding whether or not they are on an acceptable level even before they arise. This means that, the proactive approach replaces the old reactive one. Main philosophy behind this new approach consists of risk assesment at work place, receiving employees' opinion and contribution, procuring experts' assistance, informing and training staff on hazards at workplace and raising awareness on protection and prevention. Turkey started to employ methods used by developed countries for years, those are, founding an occupational safety unit and council, employing experts and medical attendants, using protection tools like training and internal audit mechanism. From this point of view, the main step of preventive occupational health and safety is making a suitable risk assesment. It is also the first step of this process. That is why, it is really important to make a correct risk assesment to carry out the rest of the process smoothly. In our country, along with the constantly advancing world, plastic technology is also rapidly changing and evolving. These developments also bring some difficulties with it. Customers' expectations of higher quality products and lower prices, exposing a great competition between companies and urging them to continious researches. Therefore, companies looking to increase the quality and striving to reduce cost. Firms have been forced to keep pace with evolving technology to ensure competition. While all of these occur, working conditions are constantly changing and human resources are gaining more and more importance. For this reason, managements of the companies will take the necessary measures to ensure the requirement has been in the forefront for the safety of employees and the company in both production stage and customer service, both at the design stage until the product reaches to the final consumer, even after the customer's use or to solve difficulties after use. With the enactment of occupational health & safety legislation no: 6331 and especially after the ministry's control has started, all of the industry to be kept informed under the leadership of PAGEV and PAGDER and occupational health and safety studies have gained a great speed. Educational programs of these associations and foundations have a positive impact on occupational health and safety awareness activities and in the majority of industry it started to be implemented. Obligation from the law, it became a necessity to employ conscious and competent staff in plastic industry. In this condition, both the employees and the employers will gain a great benefit. Thus, while maintaining a safe working environment for employees, the cost of material and moral losses arising from work-related accidents will be reduced for employers. Moreover, through the emergency plans, large proportion of workplace safety will also be provided. This situation may seem like a cost increase for employers at the beginning. However, by ensuring the material and spiritual negative effects of work-related accidents and workplace safety, employers will be throw up the higher losses that may occur in the future In this study, it is aimed to determine occupational health and safety risk scores and carry out risk analysis according to the site visits within the chosen plastic packaging factory. In this study, definitions related to occupational health and safety is made together with the risk analysis definitions that are made in national and international legislation and standards. In this study; after giving plate extruder and termoforming processes' literature information, detailed flow diagram is formed. Chemicals, raw materials and additives data used by the facility is collected. Facility's waste is listed, according to environmental legislation, it is located and its regulatory compliance is researched. General information about the risk of accidents occurring and working parts of the machine are given in plastic packaging manufacturing facilities. Facility inspections and observations made in the field, which may affect the workers' health and safety hazards are identified. For the identified hazards, what would be the likelihood of danger and violence arise, analyzed with the observations and experience are determined numerically. Numerically determined by multiplying the severity and probability values, it has emerged a risk score. This risk score values determined for each hazard and danger with high and medium risk assessment score are listed in the table. In this study, different risk analysis methodologies that are used by the plants and also appear in the literature are described in details. In this study, plastic packaging factory is visited and risk analysis study has been made by using 5x5 L Matrix methodology. All possible hazards are listed, likelihood and severity of the hazards are determined and by using these values, risk scores are calculated. Accordingly,comparisons are made by using risk scores for the hazards and the highest risks are determined. Field tours were conducted in the company where 20 high risk processes were determined and risk assessment was implemented for each of these processes.