Ethics in Industrial Hygiene and Safety AIHCE, Round Table 246 June 5, 2014

1. Ethics in Industrial Hygiene and Safety
AIHCE, Round Table 246
June 5, 2014
Maharshi Mehta, CSP, CIH
International Safety Systems, Inc.,
Washingtonville New York, USA
www.issehs.com

2. Agenda
 Case Studies
 Introduction to Ethics in Industrial Hygiene and Safety
 Current Situation
 The need
– Professional
– Personal
 Attempt to bring ethical values in organization
 Benefits - Case Studies
 Conclusions
www.issehs.com

3. Case Study
 First Construction
Safety Job
– “we don’t need you as
safety officer, we are
hiring you as client
needs”
 Laboratory analyzing
samples
– post weighing was
less than pre-weighing

4. Introduction
 Most critical compared to all professions
 Life of people depends on decisions we make
 Considerable challenges where violations are
likely
 Code of ethics in IH and Safety is fairly clear
and not ambiguous
 Benefits are enormous – individual, employee,
family, society and nation

5. Current situation
 Exposure control decisions seem to be made
based on erroneous data at 50%+ workplaces
– One or more of reproducible, representative and
reliable data missing
 Issues with sampling and analytical methods
 Greed has no lid
– Results are delivered what company or client is
looking at some of the workplaces
– Financial gains at the cost of integrity
– Tangible and intangible losses are massive

6. Issues with sampling and
analytical methods
 Collect more samples in limited time
– Exposure numbers, no indication on what is contributing to
exposure and what are recommendations
 Reproducibility
– 1 sample
 Reliability
– Calibration
– Laboratories analyzing samples
 Representativeness
– Sampling durations
 Focus on monitoring and not on exposure controls

7. The Need-Professional
 Impact on Stakeholders
– Employee
 Reputation
– ABC Environmental company appeared in news
when biological monitoring results were not
communicated
 Trust and integrity also travels in professional
community at lighting speed
 Financial and standard of living
 Business Growth – word of mouth

8. The Need-Other
 Impact on family, society and nation
 Family
– Values in children and other family members
– Bonding and benefits of bonding
– Friends
– Ever widening virtuous circle
 Nation
– Erosion of values
– Economical impact
 Impact on individual
– Effective utilization of latent ability
– Peace of mind
– Growth

9. What Brings Ethical Values in us
 Parenting
 Environment
– Reading
 The Ultimate Gift
 To Kill a Mocking Bird
– Audio-visual messages – TV Movies Media
– Schools, teachers
 Can we then apply same model at workplace?
 At workplaces, completing ethics course wont be
enough – aggressive efforts

10. Business Ethics: Codes with our
company
 Premise
– Business integrity earns respect and brings peace in our lives
– Transparency and ethics have positive impact on generations to
come
 Codes
– Do not give, receive bribe in any form cash, favor, kind, gift, %
commission
– Do not compromise on identified risk in reporting, among other
things
– Ensure sound basis

11. Confidentiality Codes
 Significance
– Most Sensitive information
– Client’s trust on us
 Do not communicate verbally or in writing what you saw at site especially
process details and findings with any one out side ISS and in ISS with
affected persons only
 Data protection: Password when you are not around in your laptop, no one
should have access to your hard disk, place relevant information in
centralized storage and delete from file
 Digital images:
– Obtain permission
– Do not take if it does not serve purpose
– Avoid taking entire process large area, take what you want
– Do not show images to ANYONE. Delete them once purpose is
served
– Keep only good images and provide to Manager or centralized
storage and then delete all images

12. Team building Chill Trip
 3 days
 Fun
 Video and books reading
– To Kill a Mocking Bird
 Several books from
Simple Truth
 Discussions on near
misses on business ethics

13. Ethics by understanding workers and
family are also Gods

14. Ethics by understanding
places of worships are
workplaces and homes

15. One can make decent living by following
business ethics
Then – 1955 to 1980
©International Safety Systems, Inc.
www.issehs.com

16. Now