Assessment of occupational risks in an aluminium processing industry

This paper presents the quantification of occupational risk in an aluminum plant producing profiles, located in Northern Greece. Risk assessment is based on the Workgroup Occupational Risk Model (WORM) project, developed in the Netherlands. This model can assess occupational risk at hazard level, activity level, job level and overall company risk. Twenty six job positions have been identified for this plant, such as operators of press extruders, forklift operators, crane operators, painters, and various other workers across the process units. All risk profiles of workers have been quantified and jobs have been ranked according to their risk. Operators at the entrance of the painting unit have the highest fatality risk (3.25 × 10−5/year), followed by the workers at the storage area (2.18 × 10−5/year) and the workers performing sandblasting of dies (1.91 × 10−5/year). Occupational risk has also been assessed for all plant units and the overall company. Storage area has the higher expected number of fatalities (2.8 × 10−4/year) followed by the surface treatment area (2.54 × 10−4/year) and the extrusion unit (1.7 × 10−3/year).