BRINGING HEALTH, SAFETY AND WELFARE INTO FOCUS

BY FRED MALVERN, PH. D., ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY, IBD PERSPECTIVE, SPRING 1994

The protection and preservation of life is among the most fundamental of human values. As private citizens, we tend to view community law enforcement, fire protection, emergency medical assistance and general emergency preparedness as top priority concerns. And, in recent times, no aspect of interior design has been more a more frequent subject of public debate than its accountability for health, safety and welfare (HSW) concerns. Member of the consumer/user public, reasonably assume that safeguards against injury are an automatic priority in every design undertaking.

Yet, despite this public expectation, environmental hazards are an increasingly evident day-to-day reality for building users. It is estimated that every year there are over 100,000 fatal accidents and roughly 10 million accidental injuries. Home accidents alone are thought to be responsible for over 27,000 annual deaths and over 4 million injuries. Over the years, accidents in public places have taken a tool of roughly 2.9 million annual injuries (70,000 of them resulting in partial or total disability) and over 23,000 fatalities. Work places of various types are the site of over 14,000 fatal accidents and 2.2 million resulting in disabling injuries.1 These are all setting for which designers routinely shape the environment.

What is interior design’s specific influence on HSWS? There is no clear answer, as yet, but information compiled by the National Safety Council 2 indicates that as many as 81 percent of all accidents are due wholly or in part to environmental causes. Statistics from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s (CPSC) National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) are a bit more definitive. This system consolidates product-related injury reports from a random sampling of hospital emergency rooms. The most recent report shows over 28,200 reported injuries associated with non-architectural furnishings and materials. Based on CPSC’s own estimates, these are likely to account for an actual total of close to 1.8 million accidents.3

Significant as these figures may seem, they do not include accidents associated with doors, windows, stairs and other assemblies with which interior designers work on a day-to-day basis. CPCS figures indicate these, alone, would at least double the 1.8 million figure. Nor do these figures take into account the acute and chronic health consequences of interior design activity. For example, the propagation of micro-organisms in interior textiles and the distillation of toxic gases from textiles, cabinetry and adhesives – to name only two – are key contributors to what is now known as the "sick building epidemic." The emotional stress imposed by inadequate provisions for privacy, security, etc., have a similar longitudinal impact. When health threats such as these are coupled with the previously cited threats of accidental injury, the potential direct and indirect impact of interior design on public health, safety and welfare is truly staggering.

Ironically, despite their obvious importance, HSW issues seldom receive more than passing attention during the designer’s formal professional education. Part of the problem is the widely held belief that the designer’s HSW role is code compliance. Clearly, HSW-related codes are the basic benchmarks of legal responsibility for public well-being and there are too few educational programs that provide a serious introduction to their interpretation and use. Ultimately though, codes define only the absolute minimum design provisions for public welfare, not optimum conditions. Accountability for the impact of interiors on public health and safety must be founded on a far broader theoretical and factual base.

A SYSTEMS APPROACH TO HSW

One essential building block for such a foundation is a clear functional definition of interior design’s influence on HSW. Division of the total HSW problem into clearer, more manageable subparts using "systems theory" is one logical starting point. In general, Merritt describes a system as "two or more essential, compatible and interrelated components, assembled to meet specific objectives." Each component contributes to the performance of the system in serving the specified functions or meeting the specified objectives.4 Clearly, a building or building interior is a system, and can be defined as a listing of its subparts or ‘systemic components." To be effective such a "systems definition" should provide one or a combination of categories with which to classify every individual part of a project. The horizontal row item in Figure 1 (not included with this transcription) provide one possible division of built environments into systemic parts.

HSW problems, too, can be defined systemically. CPSC’s NEISS accident reporting system, provides a rich pool of information on injuries related to environmental elements. As shown in the columns of Figure 1 (not included), virtually all of CPSC’s list of common environmentally-related injuries (and in fact virtually all types of HSW problems) can be classified under one or a combination of seven general mechanisms of injury or "threats." The combination of systemic components (rows) with HSW objectives (columns) forms a systemic definition of HSW issues for designers.

THREATS DEFINED

Establishing this kind of working definition of HSW issues is a useful step in establishing accountability for public well-being during the design process. A brief definition and listing of sub-threats is included below to provide the reader with a greater working appreciation of their nature and scope.

Mechanical Threats

Mechanical threats are those involving traumatic contact with material objects. Their consequences are injuries such as blunt trauma, abrasion or penetrating wounds, resulting from the following:

  1. Falls onto or from an element, such as falling onto a walk, stairs, railing, edge or other injurious object (e.g., falling down stairs);
  2. Striking and element, such a walking, moving or being propelled against an injurious element such as walking, moving or being propelled against an injurious object, by reason other than a fall (e.g., walking into a projecting drinking fountain);
  3. Being struck by an element, such as a building material, assembly, item of contents or other injurious object falling onto the victim (e.g., being struck by an overturned filing cabinet);
  4. Compression by an element, such as crushing by a building material, assembly, item of contents or other injurious object falling onto the victim (e.g., fingers pinched in a closing door); or
  5. Violent events, such as physical assault, animal attack, natural occurrences, etc.

Thermal and Radiation Threats

Thermal and radiation threats are most commonly burns caused by one or more of the following:

  1. Fire products, including contact with flame, hot gasses, hot smoke or radiant heat produced by a fire;
  2. Hot objects, such as materials and assembles (e.g., touching a hot cooking element);
  3. Hot atmospheres (e.g., an uncomfortably hot working environment) or more serious exposure to super-heated atmospheres (e.g., being contacted by escaping steam from a broken line; or
  4. Exposure to special heat sources such as lasers, nuclear radiation (not actually a thermal injury), specialized light sources (infrared, ultraviolet), etc;
  5. Hot liquids, such as falling into or being struck by hot water.

Electrical Threats

Electrical threats are those involving contact with energized electrical components, resulting in:

  1. Electrical burns due to transmission of electrical current through body tissue, resulting in deep tissue damage between points of contact; or
  2. Electrical shock due to conduction of electrical current through the body in a manner that interrupts vital bodily functions (e.g., heart fibrillation, respiratory paralysis, etc).

Chemical Threats

Chemical threats are those due to exposure to harmful atmosphere or substance, resulting in:

  1. Superficial irritation or inflammation of external tissue (e.g., eye and skin irritation);
  2. Internal inflammation of an internal organ or system (e.g., cough; raw, inflamed throat; irritation of nasal passages);
  3. Allergic reactions – highly individualized symptoms in reaction to specific conditions, from mild and transient to immediate and life threatening (e.g., reactions to certain dusts in HVAC ducts);
  4. Corrosive effects, including destruction of tissue (e.g., damaging effects of a strong acid on the skin);
  5. Toxic effects, such as short/long-term damage to organs or processes (e.g., heart, lung, kidneys); or
  6. Carcinogenic effects, including development of cancer.

Organic Threats

Organic threats are principally those involving exposure to harmful building-related organisms, resulting in:

  1. Infectious disease, including contraction of the illnesses of co-occupants of a "tight" space (e.g., an increased incidence of common colds, more rapid spread of influenza, etc.); or
  2. Building-originated infection , such as infection by bacteria and micro-organisms bred by building conditions (e.g.; unsanitary conditions in kitchens).

Physiological Threats

Physiological Threats are those involving stress to physical systems beyond their normal limits, resulting in:

  1. Skeletal-muscular distress, including bone, muscle, connective tissue stressed beyond its normal capacity (e.g., extreme force to open a door, window; back strain from maladjusted seating);
  2. Cardio-pulmonary distress, such as abnormal strain of circulatory and respiratory systems (e.g., facilities used by the aged, accessible only by long flights of stairs); or
  3. Sensory distress, including extreme or prolonged exposure to stimuli, resulting in sensory damage.

Emotional Threats

Emotional threats include exposure that results in psychological stress, i.e. requiring "excessive mental adjustment," and distorted reactions to various situations;

  1. Emotional discomfort, such as anxiety or uneasiness due to a perceived or actual physical, biological or interpersonal threat; or
  2. Emotional trauma, including strong to violent aversion to perceived or actual conditions resulting from exposure (perceived or actual physical, biological or interpersonal threat, etc.)

 

THE SYSTEMS DEFINITION AS A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

As stated earlier, each box or cell of the HSW systems definition matrix, defines a potential relationship – in this case, the interaction between a type of building part and a specific type of HSW threat. For example, in Figure 1, (not included) cell H-4 corresponds to the intersection of row item H "Sound Control" with column item 4 "Chemical Threats." It therefore focuses on possible chemical threats influenced – i.e., caused or solved – by sound control components.

Such an organizational matrix can be useful in several ways. First, a systems definition helps the designer divide complex problems – such as health and safety – into more manageable units, what Jones calls "sub-problems." Each row or column defines a particular group of HSW issues; each cell defines a specific design HSW issue. Row P, then, focuses the designer’s attention on possible threats (mechanical, thermal, electrical, etc.) that may occur in relation to the "ceiling." On the other hand, Column 2 asks, "What ‘thermal’ threats may be related to ‘site,’ ‘structure,’ exterior skin,’ etc.?" In its totality, the matrix helps the designer identify the full range of similar HSW sub-problems that need to be addressed.

A second use of the matrix is as an organizing model for information collection. Since each cell defines a sub-problem, it also indicates an information need. Just as it defines information needs, a cell’s alpha-numeric code can be used as a filing system to organize and manage collected information. All the information on chemical threats, for instance, can be coded with a 4, emotional threats with a 5, etc. This is particularly useful when applied to computer database storage and retrieval systems.

Each sub-problem requires a solution, so a third application of the matrix is to organize the solution effort. The development of "Partial solutions" (solutions to individual sub-problems) facilitates greater division of labor among members of the design team. By highlighting HSW sub-problems that might be solved independently, it encourages greater attention to specific problems and more orderly, step-by-step progress toward solution of the problem at large. Once efficient solutions have been developed for individual sub-problems, they can be blended into a well balanced "combined solution."

Finally, such a matrix serves as an informal checklist of HSW considerations at the conclusion of the design process. It does not, in and of itself, address detailed considerations. However, by providing general categories of concerns, it facilitates productive brainstorming, mental evaluation, directed client reviews and the comprehensive development of more formal evaluation tools. It can develop into as brief or as exhaustive a checklist as time and project requirements dictate.

1 Ashford, Nicholas A., Crisis in the Workplace: Occupational Disease and Injury, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976

2 Statistical Summary; 1991, Chicago, IL; National Safety Council, 1992.

3 Preliminary NEISS Estimates of National Injuries; Injuries by Product Codes, National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, Washington, DC:, Consumer Product Safety Commission, 1991.

4 Merritt, Frederick S., Building Engineering and Systems Design, New York, NY; Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1979.

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