In reviewing your OSHA Log or your in-house incident reports, how many incidents arise out of circumstances unfamiliar to you or not previously reported? New injury and illness scenarios pop up all of the time. Let’s face it, hazards are not always easily recognized, even by professionals who do it for a living. We can use all the help we can get when it comes to hazard recognition.
One of our oldest techniques for hazard recognition is the Job Safety Analysis (JSA) also called Job Hazard Analysis. It’s reported to have originated in American industry during World War II, though some date its inception way back to the 1930s. Today, JSAs have at least been tried, if not totally adopted, by nearly every organization with a well-developed EHS program.