Industrial Safety deals with the areas of safety engineering and public health that are concerned with protection of workers’ health, through control of the work environment to reduce or eliminate hazards. Industrial accidents and unsafe working conditions can result in temporary or permanent injury, illness, or even death. Various external factors such as chemical, biological and physical hazards can cause work related injury. Poor working posture or improper design of the work place often result in muscle strain, sprains, fractures, bruises and back-pain for repetitive stress injury. In recent years, the engineers have attempted to develop a systems approach termed Safety Engineering to industrial accident prevention. The systems approach examines all work locations to eliminate or control hazards. It also examines operating methods and practices and their training of employees and supervisors.
India has achieved a dubious distinction of attaining 1 billion marks so far as the population is concerned. Of them, 188 and 242 million respectively serve the industrial and agricultural sectors. India represents 10% of world workforce in agriculture. Data from organized sectors of industry show 19 fatal accidents per year per one lakh workers and this is about 2 – 3.5 times higher than those in the countries like US, Australia, New Zealand and even China. Three categories of industries, namely textile, ship dismantling and engineering account for half of the fatal accidents. Chemical, dye manufacturing, agrochemicals and petrochemicals together account for another one third of the fatalities. Data from the unorganized sector is inadequate.
National Policy on Occupational Health states that it will emphasize on providing support for re-orientation for occupational health services, facilitating the harmonization of national policies across all states, spreading the culture of prevention and workplace health promotion and developing policies designed to improve employability, increase adaptability and reduce inequality.
Safety and Occupational Health Engineering refers to a multidisciplinary approach, which inter alia includes product and manufacturing system design, safer workplace free from all types of hazards, complete wellbeing of human resources, total quality and productivity and last but not the least concern for environment.
The school has introduced part time Post Graduate programme (M.Tech) in the area of Safety and Occupational Health Engineering. This is the most important activity of the School. Other activities include, framing research proposals for consideration of funding agencies; organizing workshops, colloquia, seminars and symposia; offering short-term courses and training programmes; disseminating knowledge in related fields through publication of newsletters, working papers, and journal and collaborating with the ind