Safety Science

Personal protection equipment (PPE) holds a privileged position in safety interventions in many countries, despite the fact that they should only be used as a last resort. This is even more paradoxical because many concerns have arisen as to their actual effectiveness under working conditions and their ability to provide the protection attributed to them by certain occupational safety strategies and marketing authorisation procedures. Are these concerns justified? This article is intended to provide an update on what we know of the issue based on a critical analysis of the literature to date. Analysis focuses on the assessment of the effectiveness of coveralls used to protect from plant protection products in OECD countries. All forms of assessment were retained: discussion of the observed effectiveness of PPE in relation to the underlying assumptions of marketing authorisation procedures, laboratory tests of equipment, practical field tests in which PPE-wearing practices were controlled and uncontrolled, analyses of the efficiency of preventive instructions based on wearing such coveralls. Findings show that recommending the use of PPE is key to the granting of marketing authorisation. Some dangerous products only get marketing authorisation because it is assumed that wearing PPE will considerably limit exposure. They would be banned if it were not for this assumption of protection. However the actual effectiveness of PPE in working conditions may be over-estimated. In addition many factors (cost, availability, thermic and mechanical discomfort) may make instructions to wear PPE inapplicable. Advising the use of PPE does not always mean effective protection

Desenho do trabalho e patologia organizacional: um estudo de caso no serviço público Work design and "sick workplace syndrome": a case study in a public institution

A noção "patologia organizacional" parece propícia para descrever a precariedade do funcionamento do setor público e explicar o adoecimento dos servidores. Neste trabalho, baseado em estudo de caso em uma instituição pública, o funcionamento organizacional, suas conseqüências e o processo social de desenho do trabalho são descritos. Mostra-se que: o serviço apresenta características nítidas de "organização patológica", isto é, alta prevalência de problemas músculo-esqueléticos, funcionamento precário e pouca margem de ação da direção local; os problemas de funcionamento estão associados à fragilidade do processo de desenho do trabalho, caracterizado pela falta de competências em gestão da produção, inexistência de serviços de apoio (organização e métodos, arquitetura, etc.), pouca margem para contratações. Como muitas instituições apresentam problemas semelhantes, conclui-se que, caso o governo brasileiro pretenda se contrapor ao processo histórico de precarização dos serviços prestados aos cidadãos, ele deve re-conceber o desenho do trabalho e as estruturas disponíveis nas instituições públicas.<br>The notion of "sick workplace syndrome" is appropriate to describe the poor working conditions of many public organizations and to explain the health problems of public workers. In this paper, a case study in a public institution was carried out; its organization and its work design process were described. The results show that: this Public Institution "suffers from" a "sick workplace syndrome", i.e., there are a high prevalence of musculo-skeletal disorders, many organizational failings and lack of control by local managers; the organizational problems are associated to the limitations of the work design process due to the lack of knowledge in industrial engineering and public administration, lack of support by specific design services and small latitude to hire new workers