Improving Global Quality of Life

6.
Needs and challenges
in health, safety,
education, training,
qualification and
certification
6.1 Human and material resources
The study of the effects of phenomena occurring during welding fabrication and their effects involves many
disciplines, including welding technology, metallurgy, design, industrial hygiene, medicine, ergonomics,
epidemiology and many others.
The complete understanding of the effects of human activities on the humans themselves and on the
surrounding environment seems to be a never ending process because of ongoing changes in the working
environment due to the continuous development of materials, technologies and fabrication techniques.
In addition, the effects seem to be hardly distinguishable as the workplace environment can be only ideally
distinguished from the external environment and the relevant interaction always work as confounding
factors.
Moreover, despite the fact that the associated hazards are similar all over the world, the precautions taken
to control the risks of harm to humans and of the negative effects on the environment which may arise in
this work will vary greatly between and within countries.
Ideally, agreement would be reached internationally on the best ways forward and the agreed standards
and methods would be adopted and applied with equal vigour all over the world to benefit workers and
the industry in general. In reality, however, barriers so often spring up to prevent agreement being reached
on exactly what should be done, let alone making progress on actually achieving improvements in the
workplace.
A profitable tool to try to solve the situation might be the use of models and criteria for the design of the
welding fabrication process through the use of health and safety and environment management schemes.
This needs to be fully integrated economically with the fabrication process, leading to better use of human
and natural resources in general, while leading to better quality of the products.
54 Improving Global Quality of Life Through Optimum Use and Innovation of Welding and Joining Technologies