Electrical Health & Safety - Essay Example

There are a number of hazards faced during the usage of electricity. The following ones are important. Human body is an electrical conductor and electricity can flow through human body. If any of the materials or equipment using electricity is improperly handled, then it could cause a shock to the person operating it. This in turn, could lead to burn injuries; sometimes even death. Electricity, instead of flowing through human beings if it flows through material, then it could cause burning of the material if it has a higher resistance and is not rated to carry the current that is flowing through it now.

In this case, there could be fire accidents in the place that could cause damage and loss of property. Electricity could cause fire accidents. Therefore, we can classify the loss caused by electricity into two; one, damage to personnel and two, loss to property. In either case, it is one of the following hazards that cause such happenings. 1. Ungrounded Equipment: Electricity always flows through the path of least resistance. For that matter, anything that flows always takes the path of least resistance. . Instead if the equipment is ungrounded, then it becomes dangerous to the operators if there is a short circuit in the system. 2. Overloading : One of the major causes for short circuits is the overloading of the outlets at home or in the office.

This could also happen when there is an instrument or an equipment that is running with out anybody attending to it and should there be an overload due to some internal problem in the machine, then the overload could make the equipment burn. This could cause loss to the property. Therefore, it is very important that overloading of the equipment does not occur.3. Unsafe Equipment: There are equipments that are not made to any specific standards and are not clearly tested as well. When these equipments are used, it is possible that these equipments could cause overloading or could also cause short circuit that could lead to break of service as well could turn out to be hazardous to people using the equipment.

This could also be cables and cords that are running in the office which are not to the standards and when there is a higher current is drawn might cause a break down of the cable resulting in failures.4. Unguarded or Open Live Parts: Open live parts might be present in the office or in the factory that is considered as the most dangerous electrical situation. Similarly, plugs getting pulled out to stop supply to equipment are also not a good practice since this could cause sparking at the time of pulling out and the plug contacts are not made for this kind of breaking sparks.

Working on live equipment is another major flaw of similar nature. This can happen when say, a motor which is running is to be repaired and the