Health and Safety Implication of Demolition in Ghana

Abstract

Today, demolition projects undertaking are complex in nature, demanding greater skill, experience and precision than ever before. Demolition works are associated with a lot of dangerous activities, which in one way or the other has a great hazardous influence on operatives and surroundings in respect to the adjoining properties. The risk involved in this activity is extremely high, which are concerned with various accidents in its process. The aim of this paper is to investigate into the health and safety implication of demolition in Ghana. The objectives are to the health hazard  associated with the demolition operations, to identify the health implication of demolition on the site. To determine the precautions implemented during demolition of works on site. Observation and questionnaires were adopted to collect the data. Descriptive statistics involving the use of tables and percentages were used to analyse the data. The analysis of the data once again revealed that, noise pollution recorded 71.43% as the highest impact  during demolition of works, followed by dust generation with 57.14%. Vibration also recorded 42.86% followed by hazardous substance and materials with 25%. Flying particles and debris, inhalation of toxic and unintentional collapse of structure recorded 21.43%, 14.29% and 7.14% respectively. It is also recommended that, all the workers goes through a proper job safety training and be informed of the potential hazards by attending sessions as well as on-the-job-training.

Keywords: Health, Safety, Implication, Demolition, Ghana