Health and safety in the foundry

Concern for health and safety is not a luxury for large companies. On the contrary, today it's a necessity, as part of a total quality approach.

When it comes to human resources, non-quality leads to increased absenteeism, a higher number of occupational illness claims, and a higher frequency of workplace accidents: all criteria whose direct and indirect costs penalize the company. At the extreme, it can result in staff demotivation, with less quantifiable effects, but just as detrimental to performance.

In the foundry, as elsewhere, success depends on people; creating, innovating, managing and producing are the fruit of a company's dynamism and the commitment of all those involved in a genuine corporate culture.

In this context, managing health and safety is a management imperative. It relies on the knowledge of experts such as occupational physicians, safety department managers and human resources managers, and commits every member of staff to this global total quality approach.

In this article, we attempt to take stock of the main issues concerning health and safety in the foundry.

Necessarily succinct, this text does not claim to be exhaustive, but rather to be part of a process of reflection consistent with the progress approaches developed in our companies.

We will develop these in turn:

• the main process-related nuisances ;

• chemical risk and its management ;

• machine safety risk ;

• Finally, we'll look at accident risk.