IE 8570: Health, Safety, and the Environment
Class project: Risk Communication
The focus of the term project for this class is risk communication. For this project, you will need to
select one aspect of the course (mostly likely a topic in Module 3 or 4) and do the following activities related to
that topic. It does not need to relate to your job or your industry but should be something that you find
interesting. I am going to use an example of a forestry industry safety issues.
1. You are tasked with presenting this issue (e.g., forestry related injuries) to upper management. What are the
effects of the exposure, how might it be mitigated or controlled? You will need to discuss the health/safety
effects and potential for loss of work time, etc. What do you think are good PPE? Are they affordable? Should
the employee or the company provide the PPE? You will need to construct a means to communicate this to the
upper management (I foresee powerpoint presentations, but I know that some companies communicate in
memos etc., so other media will be accepted). You will need to create a convincing argument for continued
efforts in this area. For example, in my forestry industry example, if workers were not using spiked shoes, how
would you convince upper management that the investment in these shoes might actually help the company
financially? You may need to provide data in the presentation, so you can use data from governments or non-
profit organizations (NPOs) to help create your arguments, but this is not required.
2. You are also tasked with presenting this issue to workers on the plant floor (or forestry workers in my
example). This population of workers are those who are exposed to the risks, so it may be office workers if your
project applies to office environments, or machine operators, or welders etc. I expected this presentation to be
different in terms of how you communicate to this audience, compared to upper than to upper management.
Workers may not need to know about the injury rates and industry trends but do need to understand how to use
PPE and the health/safety effects that are associated with their job. How would they identify symptoms early to
seek medical care to mitigate long term or more severe effects (in the case of health outcomes) or identify safety
related situations before an accident occurs? I anticipate a powerpoint as well here, but memos, and other means
of communication are also acceptable.
3. You will also need to create a poster/flyer style quick risk communication signs specific to your issue and the
workers in the area. There are MANY posters available for occupational safety and health issues online, but a
lot of them are outdated, ineffective, and do not take into account the specific audiences in different areas or
industries. Do we really pay attention to a safety poster from the 1990s or even the 2010’s? For example, I
assume that a ‘break-room’ style poster would be completely ineffective to communicate to forestry workers.
Would a brochure that workers could take home be effective if you are discussing some chemical exposures that
the workers could take home to their families (via their person or clothing etc.)?
4. In addition to the actual risk communication materials you will need to submit a brief report (about 5 pages,
double spaced) about your strategy for these presentations, the sources of data and information, and what you
have learned about the topic. Please think carefully about how you communicate these issues to different
audiences. For example, things you should consider:
Do workers on the plant floor generally all speak the same language?
What do you think is the reading level of workers (or administrators)?
What kind of a presentation of information will hold someone’s attention?
Would the terms in our textbook be appropriate for communicate with these individuals?
How do you help both upper administration and workers identify safety/health issues and become
engaged?
