Most occupational safety experts now say that the best way to reduce occupational hearing loss is to lower noise levels at the source of the noise, through better engineering of power tools and machinery.

Building on that is a point of view, some researchers are now saying that the best way to prevent falls - the No. 1 killer of construction workers - is through proper engineering on a structure before any earth is moved.

"We in the United States identify the hazards when we fall or when there's a near miss or when we almost slip," said Michael Wright of Safety by Design by LBJ Inc., in the Construction Labor Report. He and co-worker Mark Stemmer addressed the National Safety Council's annual safety congress on Sept.24. They concluded that what employers need to do is conduct safety evaluations much earlier, "at the designer's drawing board."

An example used was to examine the cost of designing and placing the cost of guard rails into the construction process in a given area (such as around skylights or roof edges), vs. having workers tie off with a safety line to a fixed point. Wright and Stemmer said that the anchor point approach may be cheaper in the short term, but its long-term costs "were pretty high," Stemmer said. Safety lines might reduce injury risks when a worker falls, but the lines don't eliminate the falls, like guard rails would. In addition, there are costs associated with training, rescue, equipment and job shutdown.

Stemmer said guard rails are higher on the "hierarchy of control," a method for ranking fall control techniques. The problem is, most of the construction industry traditionally looks to the bottom of the hierarchy for answers, through the use of personal protection equipment for workers, such as ear plugs and safety harnesses, rather than at the source of the hazard. The National Safety Council is one group that's doing a great deal of research in the area of engineered safety controls. Their Institute for Safety Through Design was set up "to fill a knowledge vacuum."

Better safety design, said the authors of one paper prepared by the institute, will result in "significant reductions achieved in injuries, illnesses, damage to the environment, and attendant costs; productivity will be improved; operating costs will be reduced, and expensive retrofitting to correct design shortcomings will be avoided."

Some other changes that can improve safety in the design stage range from the placement of a machine's controls in a consistent, logical manner, to making ergonomically correct tools, to good evacuation design in a high-rise.

Charles Jeffress, who recently left his post as OSHA administrator, said the benefits of safety planning are clear.

"One study estimated that a safety and health program saves $4 to $6 for every $1 invested," he said. "That's because injuries and illnesses decline. Workers' comp costs go down. Medical costs decrease. There are other, less quantifiable benefits as well - reduced absenteeism, lower turnover, higher productivity and increased employee morale."