THE IMPACT OF MAJOR TRANSFORMATIONS OF A PRODUCTION PROCESS ON AGE-RELATED ACCIDENT RISKS - A STUDY OF AN IRON-ORE MINE

This paper describes a study of whether accident risks were equally di stributed across age categories among a population of mining workers w hose work activities were suspected to be age-impaired. The impairment factors in focus are the transformation of production technology duri ng the 80s and consequent changes in job content. It was hypothesized that the combined effect of these factors might lead accident risks, b oth nonspecific (aggregated) and specific (by kind), to increase with age. Accident risk ratios (ARRs), however, proved to be higher for you nger workers than older ones, in both the non-specific and the specifi c cases. However, two accident patterns (specific risks) also show rel atively high ARRs among workers in their 40s (and even 30s), results t hat might be explained by particular exposures and/or age-related perf ormance problems. The findings suggest that technological changes desi gned to increase productivity and reduce staffing levels more rapidly affect efficiency and productivity than they do accident occurrence, a nd that they penalize young workers in the first instance. Copyright ( C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd