ABSTRACT
The primary issues of concern in terms of the influence of the immediate workplace environment on the potential for human error are: Noise; Lighting; Thermal Environment. High level noise has a clearly established occupational health risk with, over extended periods of exposure, significant reductions in hearing ability. By far and away the most common risk mitigation measure to deal with the occupational health risk from noise is the use of personal hearing protection, in the form of hearing defenders/muffs, ear inserts etc. In relation to both lighting and noise considerable care should be taken to examine all aspects and all tasks to be carried out in the area – without care a solution for one task can easily become a problem for another. Using international standards, good human factors information or a structured risk-based process can be of considerable assistance to help ensure that aspects of workplace environment do not increase the likelihood of errors.
