KOSHA boosts its efforts to enhance safety of workers in the cafeteria and laboratory

June 6, 2013

KOSHA provides a standard for workers in the cafeteria and laboratory to help them find out and prevent risks by themselves.

President Hun-ki Baek of KOSHA proposed ‘Risk Assessment Standard’ to help workers in the cafeteria and laboratory to prevent accidents due to cooking equipment in the kitchen and chemical materials in the laboratory.

It is easy for workers in the cafeteria and laboratory who are mostly women and aged workers to trip on the slippery floor of the kitchen and to be exposed to danger while experimenting in the laboratory.

In fact, according to the investigation on occupational injuries in the education and service sector over the past 5 years conducted by KOSHA’s service prevention team, age group that reported highest accident rates were those in their forties. The most frequent accident type was trips followed by exposure to extreme temperature.

Considering such a circumstance, the standard KOSHA established would separate the whole work process of the cafeteria into front-end process that includes purchasing and storing food materials, and back-end process that includes cooking, transporting, distributing and cleaning. The standard also gives detailed guidelines on each operation.

For the laboratory, the standard sets safety guidelines for each risk factor that could emerge from dealing with experiment device, preparing experimental drug, conducting experiment, and arranging laboratory.

<Accident case 1>

A woman slipped on the stairs after she cleaned the ventilation hood on the rotary type pot. She fell down to the floor and got hurt.

<Accident case 2>

A contract worker aged 30 working at laboratory of school in Seoul got burned while she made sulfuric acid using glassware.

KOSHA updated the ‘Risk Assessment Standard’ about laboratories and cafeterias on its website and provided them to food companies and organizations such as The Korean Dietetic Association. They would also be provided to schools and relate work places once they accept them.

A person from KOSHA said that this Risk Assessment Standard would be helpful to protect vulnerable workers such as women and seniors especially working at school cafeterias and laboratories, encouraging many work places to access the guideline.