Conference paper
Analysis of forestry work accidents in five Australian forest companies for a period of 2004 to 2014
Proceedings of the 6th International Forest Engineering Conference
International Forest Engineering Conference “Quenching our thirst for new Knowledge”, 6th (Rotorua, New Zealand, 16-Apr-2018–19-Apr-2018)
University of Canterbury
2018
Abstract
There is little knowledge available regarding Australian forestry work safety and accident rates. Machine operators and forestry workers are a vital part of the forestry sector and their health and well-being can greatly impact on their work quality and efficiency. To increase our knowledge on forest workers' safety this project aimed to analyse the frequency, type and root causes of work accidents which occurred within different forestry activities of five industry partners of AFORA over the period from 2004 to 2014. A questionnaire was designed and distributed to the partners to collect the safety incident reports. Total number of work accidents was 470 for a period of 11 years (a rate of 43 accidents per year). Considering the estimated yearly production rates of the industry partners participated in this project the accident severity rate was 14.40 accidents/million cubic meters of harvested wood. Most of accidents occurred in harvesting operations (37%) and forest management (30.2%). Based on the results 8.1% of the accidents occurred during firefighting and 24.3% of work accidents occurred in other forestry activities. Main root causes of accidents for different types of activities were personal errors such as lack of PPE, operator error, poor body position and poor applied techniques. Work safety training could be delivered to forestry personnel to minimise accidents caused by personal errors. Back and shoulder (as upper body parts) received the most injuries. To avoid/reduce muscular damages (such as strain and sprain) the workers should be provided with proper ergonomic training.
Details
- Title
- Analysis of forestry work accidents in five Australian forest companies for a period of 2004 to 2014
- Authors
- Mohammad R Ghaffariyan (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Arts, Business and Law
- Publication details
- Proceedings of the 6th International Forest Engineering Conference; 12
- Conference details
- International Forest Engineering Conference “Quenching our thirst for new Knowledge”, 6th (Rotorua, New Zealand, 16-Apr-2018–19-Apr-2018)
- Publisher
- University of Canterbury
- Date published
- 2018
- Copyright note
- Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Reproduced with permission.
- Organisation Unit
- University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; Forest Industries Research Centre; Forest Research Institute
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99451476402621
- Output Type
- Conference paper
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