2016 Volume 9 Issue 2 Pages 79-89
Uniform criteria that are accepted publicly for judging and evaluating risks have yet to be established. Consequently, the policy derived from risk-assessment results relies on the subjective views of the persons who conduct the risk assessment, and the validity of the results is not necessarily assured. This study showed that there are limits to avoiding this issue within the scope of autonomous occupational safety and health activities at a single place of business. Therefore, a system is required in which the risk reduction states of machinery are individually and specifically verified by third parties who are knowledgeable of safety standards and good practices. We defined this as “validation” and investigated four European countries where machinery safety centered on the implementation of risk assessment has been promoted in advance of Japan. As a result, it was found that labor standards inspection could contain an activity equivalent to “validation” within the framework of the current Japanese social institutions. Moreover, the following two points particularly need to be reviewed: (1) clarifying the relationship of laws and regulations with industrial standards pertaining to machinery safety so that they are closely linked, and (2) collecting and widely disseminating information about good practices which are identified through inspections to prevent machinery-related accidents.
