What Effect Does Alcohol Have on Safety?
Posted by admin | Filed under Management
Alcohol and substance abuse should be a major concern to every U.S. citizen, but especially to employers. About 1 out of every 12 adults (17.6 million) in the U.S. abuse alcohol or are alcohol dependent. Over 3 million U.S. residents use cocaine, and more than 10 million abuse prescription drugs. Another million are heroin addicts. Most of them do not receive treatment and they affect the safety of everyone around them. It’s been recently estimated that over 74% of the substance abusers and substance dependents are employed. These millions of people don’t leave their dependency behaviors behind when they step into the workplace.
How alcohol affects a person’s safety
Even if the person doesn’t consume alcohol on the job, the individual’s job performance may be affected by the alcohol dependency. Here are some ways that alcohol may affect the individual. These statistics are based off of using a 150 lb. male consuming two drinks in 1 hour to equal a Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) of 0.04 percent as reference.
- Brain’s control of eye movements – Low to moderate Blood Alcohol Content (0.03 to 0.05 percent) can interfere with voluntary eye movements and impair the person’s ability to track a moving object.
- Eye-to-hand reaction time – May be significantly impaired with as low as 0.035 percent BAC and the impairment increases as the BAC increases.
- Information processing – Alcohol impairs every aspect of the brain’s information processing, but especially narrows the amount of information the person pays attention to. Impairment begins at approximately 0.04 percent BAC.
- Divided attention deficits can occur with just 0.02 percent BAC, and these divided attention deficiencies can interfere with communications with 0.04 percent BAC.
- Serious planning and performance errors, procedural errors, and vigilance failures can begin at the lowest BAC (0.025 percent) and increase as the BAC increases.
In comparison to their non-abusing co-workers, substance abusers are 10 times more likely to miss work. They are 3.6 times more likely to be involved in on-the-job accidents, while being 5 times more likely to cause an injury to themselves or others in the process. The substance abusers are 5 times more likely to file workman compensation claims while being 33% less productive. The abusers and substance dependent individuals are responsible for 40% of all industrial fatalities.
These employees tend to lower productivity and increase the work load for other employees, as well as raise the cost of insurance and health care. They also compromise product/service quality, tarnish the company’s image and can cause financial ruin for the employer.
What the employer can do
To ensure the safety and well-being of all employees and the company, employers can conduct drug testing and drug screening programs. Abusers and substance dependents tend to apply for employment at places that do not require drug screening and testing. Since most small businesses do not conduct testing, they are especially vulnerable.
Drug testing required
All employers and educators should also be aware that there are some federal and state regulations that require certain types of drug testing. Some are geared towards specific occupations, while others are more general in nature. However, non-compliance with these laws and regulations can result in substantial fines, loss of business privileges, and sanctions.
Fortunately, there are now companies like USAMDT that make it easy to comply with these laws. USAMDT is one-hundred percent mobile, providing on-site drug and alcohol testing services to all types of clients. Not only does USAMDT provide drug and alcohol testing, they also provide a variety of other services to help their clients identify, manage, and avoid alcohol and drug problems. These other services include conducting background screening and providing drug and alcohol training classes. USAMDT’s mobile service makes it more convenient and less expensive for a company to keep the workplace drug-free and safer.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
