ENVH 390 Introduction

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ENVH 390 - Introduction

• History
• of
• Construction Hazards

2
Historical Perspectives of Construction Workers

• Historically, construction workers have been
  among the most abused, most discriminated against
  workers.
• Often, children, slaves and prisoners were forced
  into the construction trades because of the
  hazardous nature.

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Child LaborersWhat Might Be the Negative Effects
From Using Child Labor?
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Life Expectancy of Construction Workers

• The life expectancy of the earliest construction
  workers (before 1800) was 20-30 years old.
• In the early 1900s that number increased to 47
• Today, construction workers can expect to live
  nearly as long as the rest of the population (78)
  provided they follow safety and lifestyle
  recommendations
• http//www.me.utexas.edu/ans/info/health4.htm

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Historical Perspectives

• The earliest recorded environmental issues
  associated with construction are associated with
  mining.
• Bernardino Ramazzini, in the early 1700s is
  attributed with bringing attention to the
  horrible conditions that miners and other early
  workers (often slaves or prisoners) were being
  exposed to.

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Bernardino Ramazzini

• An Italian Physician, is famous for being the
  Father of Occupational Medicine.
• Ramazzini came up with the question what is
  your trade whenever he examined patients.

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Great Pyramids of Egypt - No one knows exactly
how they were constructed, but it is believed
that 10s of thousands of slaves gave their lives
to build them.
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Sir Percival Pott

• A London surgeon, described the role of
  polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) from chimney soot
  to scrotal cancer in chimney sweeps.
• Significance?

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Chimney Sweeps
German Chimney Sweep 19th Century
British Chimney Sweep 19th Century
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The True Cost of Construction

• When we see the bottom line..the cost of
  building a bridge or road or skyscraper, we
  seldom see or even think about the non-green
  costs..the cost of mens lives..the cost of
  crippling illness and injury..the cost to widows
  and orphans of lost wagesloss opportunity to
  live life.
• The industrial revolution is littered with the
  ultimate price paid, not by the owners but by
  the men who built the modern marvels

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Coal Mining
Company Store
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The three worst coal mine disasters in U.S.
history
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Mining

• Safety Lamp helped prevent mine explosions from
  methane ignition

• Hardhat electric lamps further added a measure
  of safety

Mining Canary

• Methanometer

Addition of Communications
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Empire State Building
The 102 story, 1454 foot marvel was finished in
1931 it took 1 year and 45 days. With 3,400
workers on the job daily, only 6 workers and 1
pedestrian died during the construction.
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Brooklyn Bridge

• 20-30 deaths, including the chief engineer
  occurred while building this bridge.
• Likely 100s of serious injuries however, they
  were not recorded.
• Built in the late 1800s, most deaths resulted
  from the innovative cabling process

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Brooklyn Bridge

• The bridge caissons were 78 ft deep.
• Caissons disease was common among those workers
  assigned to the bridge footing.
• Caissons disease is a crippling and sometimes
  fatal illness resulting from working under high
  atmospheric pressure

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Golden Gate Bridge

• In 1933, some 50 years after its conception, the
  GG Bridge was begun.

During construction, Joseph B. Strauss insisted
on the use of the most rigorous safety
precautions in the history of bridge building.
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Golden Gate Safety

• A unique aspect of the construction of this
  bridge was that a safety net was set up beneath
  it, significantly reducing the number of deaths
  that were typical for a construction project such
  as this in the early 1900s.
• 11 men were killed from falls during construction
• 19 men were saved by the safety net.

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Tunnel Building

• The Gauley Bridge/Tunnel in WVA is infamous for
  devastating an entire community of its adult
  males. More on this later.
• A total of 13 sandhogs (tunnel workers) died
  during the construction of the Holland Tunnel in
  NY.

Holland Tunnel - NY
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Panama Canal

• Begun in 1880 by the French, it has been
  estimated that over 25,000 fatalities occurred
  prior to the U.S. took over the construction
  the enormous number of fatalities lead to the
  French abandoning the project.

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Panama Canal

• In the early 1900s, the U.S. picked up the
  construction and with a typical workforce of
  45,000, finished the canal in 1914.
• Workers faced yellow fever, poisonous snakes, and
  malaria along with the more common construction
  hazards

The Highly Poisonous Bushmaster Was One of the
Many Construction Pests that Faced the Canal
Workers
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Panama Canal

• Malaria and Yellow Fever had to be overcome in
  order to build the canal without the same
  disastrous results as the French experienced.

Dr. Walter Reed
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Panama Canal

• Gold Roll White workers from U.S.
• Silver Roll All other ethnicities, primarily
  black Antilleans
• While the reported 5,141 fatalities contained the
  gold roll, no one knows how many silver roll
  workers gave their lives perhaps as high as 5X
  as much.

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Hoover Dam
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Hoover Dam

• At the time (Great Depression), the Hoover was
  the Worlds largest dam.
• With a typical workforce of 3,500 112 gave
  their lives in the construction of this
  engineering marvel.

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Commercial Divers

• Early divers who worked to construct bridges and
  other aquatic structures were commonly maimed or
  killed on the job.
• Working in primitive diving suits and pressure
  diving bells divers were well paid and highly
  regarded because of the high risk they undertook

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Electrocution

• 20 of all construction worker fatalities are
  caused by electrocution.
• Most of these are from overhead power lines

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A tower crane was lowering a concrete bucket to
be filled by a truck.The wind blew the hoist
line and bucket into overhead power lines.A
worker trying to pull the bucket back was
electrocuted.
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A worker was painting a building from a boom-type
powered elevating work platform. He backed up
without checking how close he was to a power
line. The machine touched the line. Trying to
escape from the bucket he climbed onto the roof
and was electrocuted.
30
A driver raised the box on his dump truck to
spread gravel under a power line. When the box
contacted the line, he got out of the cab to see
what had happened. His foot touched the ground
while his hand was still holding the door. He was
electrocuted instantly.
31
Two aluminum siding installers were lifting trim
for the exterior of a house. Although aware of
nearby powerlines, they failed to allow for the
length or bulkiness of their material. A piece of
trim shifted as it was lifted, struck a line, and
one worker was electrocuted.
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Selected Construction Tragedy

• Two days before Thanksgiving in 1997, 39 year old
  William Peck fell to his death from a improperly
  erected scaffold while working on the façade of
  the 11th floor of Sanger Hall just outside my
  office door.
• Peck was barely a blip on the radar of yearly 150
  or so work-related fatalities in VA.
• Tell that to Pecks widow and children.

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Sanger Hall, Campus of Virginia Commonwealth
University Medical College of Virginia. Site
of William Pecks Fatal Fall in November 1997
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Construction Fatalities in NC

• Annually, about 200 workers die on the job in NC.
• While the number of worker deaths has dropped
  slightly in recent years, the numbers in the
  construction industry have actually risen.
• About 16 percent of the workers are Hispanic, yet
  over ¼ of the fatalities occur to Hispanics. Why
  is this?
• More than ½ of fatalities typically occur in 5
  counties Wake, Guilford, Mecklenburg, Cabarrus
  and Rowan. Why is this?

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Recent Construction Tragedies

• On August 4, 2004, 28 tunnel workers in India
  were killed in a tunnel collapse. The work has
  continued no additional safety precautions were
  taken
• Also this year, the headlines in Toledo, OH read,
  5 Dead, 3 Seriously Injured When a 2 Million
  Pound Crane Collapsed on Bridge Construction
  Site.
• 150 Workers Died Building the Olympic Facilities
  in Greece (2004)