Workplace safety is often discussed in terms of regulations and compliance. Yet for many workers, especially in industrial and manufacturing settings, safety is experienced, or ignored, in far more practical ways. My early professional exposure within a large manufacturing environment in Nigeria revealed how easily safety can be reduced to a formality rather than a daily practice.
From observation across several industries, despite the presence of safety policies, monitoring is often limited, enforcement is inconsistent, and personal protective equipment is treated as optional rather than essential. Over time, the gap between written rules and lived reality becomes impossible to ignore.
In many manufacturing environments, hazards are well known. Heavy machinery, manual lifting, chemical exposure, and repetitive tasks present daily risks.
Yet safety oversight is often not stretched far enough to match these realities.
Workers frequently bypass protective equipment, not always out of defiance, but due to habit, discomfort, or pressure to meet production targets. In some cases, tasks that could have been mechanised were still performed manually, increasing the likelihood of strain injuries, cuts, and accidents.
These conditions do not reflect a lack of awareness alone; they reflect systemic gaps in monitoring, training, and operational prioritisation.
When safety systems are weak, the consequences extend beyond immediate injuries. Minor incidents accumulate over time, leading to chronic musculoskeletal problems, long-term health complications, and repeated absenteeism.
Families absorb the burden, healthcare systems manage preventable cases, and productivity declines. From a public health standpoint, unsafe workplaces quietly contribute to disease burden and rising healthcare costs, often without being recognised as upstream risk factors.
True safety requires more than policies and posters. It demands consistent supervision, worker engagement, and practical investments in risk reduction. Mechanised tools, ergonomic redesign, and safer workflow processes can dramatically lower injury rates—but only when organisations commit to using them effectively.
Equally important is building a culture where safety is not viewed as a barrier to productivity, but as a foundation for it.
As more workers remain in physically demanding roles later in life, the risks associated with poor safety systems intensify. Tasks that younger workers may recover from quickly can result in lasting injury for older employees managing chronic health conditions.
Protecting this segment of the workforce requires foresight rather than reaction—anticipating risk instead of responding after harm occurs.
Workplace safety should be understood as a core component of population health prevention. Public health training brings valuable tools, data analysis, risk assessment, and systems thinking that can strengthen safety programs and reduce preventable harm.
My experience reinforced a simple truth: when safety is treated as optional, injuries become inevitable. When it is treated as essential, prevention becomes possible.
As nations pursue economic growth and industrial expansion, safeguarding the health of workers must remain central. Prevention begins where people work, and the workplace remains one of the most powerful settings for public health intervention.
Oluwatosin Oluwafemi is a public health professional
