What the COVID-19 pandemic tells about occupational health and safety

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As an expert in occupational health and safety, Martin Sanders will always use real-world opportunities to educate more people on the importance of the practices in his industry. In this blog entry, he lifts an example of the importance of occupational health and safety figures amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The truth is, the general principles of occupational health and safety have already been in place for a very long time. It is mostly with critical world events like the COVID-19 pandemic that everyone got a wake-up call that makes revisiting company policies necessary.

In an article written by Paul Prescod, it was pointed out that the magnitude of the impact of COVID-19 has even placed occupational health and safety at the center of politics in America, shares Martin Sanders.

Before, occupational health and safety did not receive the importance that it does today. Often, specific policies in occupational health and safety were only reactive to the troubles of the times.

There is a lot of evidence from earlier years that shows that any legislation that brought changes to occupational health and safety was motivated or instigated more by workforce unions than Congress itself. The people hugely affected by the lack of policy even set up strikes that brought attention to dangerous working conditions.

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The clear difference now is that it’s not only small pockets of communities craving better conditions in the workplace. Because of the pandemic, occupational health and safety has become everybody’s concern today.

With his his vast experience in the field of occupational safety and health, Capt. Martin Sanders, Ph.D., has been helping many organizations and businesses in their programs. For more about his work, visit this page.

Disclaimer: This site was prepared by Martin Sanders in his personal capacity. The opinions expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the views of the USPHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, or the United States government.

Author: Martin Sanders

Captain Martin Lloyd Sanders, Ph.D., is an officer in the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS), where the Surgeon General had appointed him as Chief Scientist. He has had more than 18 years of service in the field of occupational safety and health. He also currently serves as the Director of Safety, Environmental Compliance and Emergency Management for Federal Occupational Health, Program Support Center, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration. In addition, he is the acting Chief of Safety for the Department of Health and Human Services.

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