Various metrics are used to provide the most accurate definition of workplace characteristics. Hygiene safety is one of these indicators.
Based on hygienic criteria, working conditions can be divided into four main classes:
1. Optimal working conditions, which make it possible to fully preserve the health of the employee, and also create the prerequisites for maintaining his performance at the highest possible level. Optimal working conditions are characterized by a complete absence of harmful production factors or the presence of the latter, but at a level that does not pose a threat to human health.
2. Permissible working conditions, which are characterized by the impact of negative factors of the production environment, the level of which does not exceed the permissible indicators of hygienic standards. As for the deterioration of the health status of workers, it takes place under similar working conditions: however, by the beginning of each new shift (or during vacation), a person is fully recovered. In this regard, this type of working conditions is also referred to as safe.
3. The third class includes harmful working conditions, which are a combination of certain factors of the production process, which have a heavy or harmful effect on both the state of health and the level of human performance. They are characterized by the presence of harmful production factors that, exceeding the established hygienic standards, have a rather tangible adverse effect on the employee's body, as well as on his offspring. Such production factors, first of all, lead to the occurrence of occupational diseases, provoke a decrease (as a rule, temporary, however, in some cases, persistent) work capacity can be observed, increase the incidence of an employee's morbidity with various non-production ailments, and also often cause health problems in his future offspring.
4. As for the fourth class, that is, hazardous working conditions, their main distinguishing feature can be considered the presence of production factors, which, acting on the body during a work shift (and in some cases, a separate part of it), create a high the risk of injury or injury, as well as a rather serious threat to health and life. Labor activity is recognized as a source of increased danger if it meets the following two indicators:
- creates an increased likelihood of causing certain physical labor both to those people who are directly involved in the production process and to the population living close to the enterprise;
- differs in the absence of the possibility of complete control over it by a person.
At the same time, it should be noted separately that hazardous production facilities themselves are also more than a serious source of increased danger for workers, as well as people around them. Work in such conditions is prohibited (this prohibition does not apply only to the elimination of accidents and the implementation of measures to prevent them).
