KANBrief 1/24
With its “Vision Zero”, the International Social Security Association (ISSA) has been promoting healthy and accident-free work for many years, and has formulated guidelines for this purpose in the form of seven “Golden Rules”(in German, non e-Accessible), (see box). Standardization has considerable potential to support these rules, but also has its limits in certain areas.
Golden Rule 5 of Vision Zero relates to a core objective of standardization. With its design specifications, safety requirements and test procedures, standardization plays a role in reducing hazards, organizing systems effectively, designing machines and other work equipment to be safe, and testing them reliably. By making standardized test procedures available, standards can also support Golden Rule 2. Such procedures assist employers in meeting their obligation to identify and assess workplace hazards (such as vibration) in order to take suitable protective measures.
Golden Rule 4 requires safety and health to be assured by good organization. ISO 45001 addresses aspects such as the responsibility and role model function of senior management, the communication of occupational safety and health measures, and co-determination involving workers’ representation. The standard can therefore contribute to workplace safety and the prevention of occupational accidents and diseases. However, it also touches on aspects of the safety and health of workers at work – aspects that lie outside the scope of standardization and are to be regulated at national level. Since the publication of ISO 45001, the standards committee responsible (ISO TC 283, Occupational Health and Safety Management) has produced a number of other standards. These include ISO 45002 on occupational health and safety management in small and medium-sized enterprises, ISO 45003 on psychological health and safety at work, and standardization projects concerning occupational safety and health indicators. These and other management standards have confirmed the fears of German OSH stakeholders that ISO 45001 was merely the prelude to further standardization activities encroaching upon the safety and health of workers at work.
The European Commission and the standards organizations expressly support service standards. Such standards are intended to facilitate comparison between services, and to ease cross-border trade. Although assuring the safety and health of service providers is rarely their primary purpose, it is considered a criterion for the quality of a service – even when this aspect is governed by other rules and regulations. Contradictions in this area may lead to users satisfying only the standard, and disregarding the binding statutory requirements.
Qualification requirements to be met by service providers and of relevance to safety are also repeatedly addressed in standards, for example those concerning railway track construction, the safe handling of chemical and biological substances by pest controllers, or the work of tattooists. These aspects all concern the safety and health of workers at work, which raises the question: is this really a task for standardization?
Problems also arise when standards are to address new technologies or immature concepts, the full ramifications of which are not yet known. An example is DIN SPEC 67600, Complementary criteria for lighting design and lighting application with regard to non-visual effects of light. When the DIN SPEC was first published, sufficiently validated scientific findings concerning the non-visual effects of light were not yet available, and detailed planning recommendations could not therefore be issued. In this case, too, the safety and health of workers at work was affected.
Standards are most beneficial to Vision Zero when they focus on defining verifiable requirements concerning safe machinery, work equipment and workplaces. In other areas, OSH stakeholders must recognize that limits must be imposed on standardization where it fails to add value, adopts immature concepts, imposes excessive management or other requirements, or infringes upon the competence of national or international regulators.
Angela Janowitz
janowitz@kan.de
