Safety climate in the Ghanaian printing industry

industry under the manufacturing industry, has over the years, witnessed serious accidents such as amputation, bruising and crushing caused by knives and clamps [6 (p8)]. Industry data showed that occupational exposure to printing processes, carbon black, printing inks and the nitro compound is possibly carcinogenic–leading to lung and bladder cancer–to humans [7]. In a related study, workers operating within the print production industry were found to be at high risk of contracting oesophageal, stomach, lung and ovarian cancers [8, 9]. Printing remains an important industry in the economy of Ghana. Although Ghana does not report a great deal of manufacturing output or employment statistics to international agen- cies [10], the last time an industrial census was conducted in 2003, about 26,000 manufactur- ing establishments were employing about 243,500 persons. As cited in Esseh, according to records from the Ministry of Trade and Industry dating back to 1983, the printing industry comprises 450 individual establishments that employed 13,173 people in mainly small and medium-sized companies [11]. The yearly value-added of the printing industry, together with other industries within the manufacturing sector, in 2016, was 5.63% of the US $55,010,000,000 GDP, which translates to US$3,097, 063,000 [12, 13]. The most common com- mercial printing types are: offset lithography, flexography and, more recently, a move into dig- ital printing. While there is a dearth of literature and empirical data on the state of safety climate of the

printing industry in Ghana, the scarcely available literature shows that workers in the industry are exposed to a high level of injuries, diseases and risks (different occupational hazards) [14]. A series of unpublished research conducted by the Department of Publishing Studies, KNUST, (the only institution established by UNESCO and tasked with the responsibility of developing human resource capacity for the printing and publishing industry in Africa), found several undocumented occupational injuries and accidents in the printing houses within the Accra and Kumasi metropolis. Also, Addae et al. [15], in a study on the human and environmental impact of print production that included an analysis of the side effects of chemicals on press workers, showed work conditions exposed workers to asthma, lung diseases, respiratory dis- eases, irritations and constant headaches and catarrh. In another news article [16] and one other unpublished study by Esseh [11] several workers within the Ghanaian printing and other industries were exposed to several hazards: musculoskeletal disorders because of manual han- dling, slips and trips on production floors, high-temperature environment, and high noise and vibration [11]. Out of the total number of press houses in that study, 45% admitted that their workers have suffered an occupational hazard. In a published empirical study on traumatic injuries among printing press workers in Ghana, Agbenorku et al. [14] found that press workers sustained many forms of injuries; lacer-

ation, fracture, dislocation, crushes, amputation and multiple fingernails torn off. Their study concluded that the prevalence rate of traumatic injuries among workers in the printing indus- try in Ghana was 67%. Boateng and Amedofu [17] also found that 7.9% of workers in the printing industry have evidence of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). Besides human suffer- ing, loss of life, and environmental impact, the economic cost of industrial accidents on a nation cannot be trivialised. According to the International Labour Organization [18] (ILO), workplace injuries and illnesses result in about a 5% loss of Gross Domestic Product. Such a loss cost the Ghanaian economy an estimated $3.27 billion a year, given that Ghana’s current GDP stands at USD65.55 billion [13]. It is acknowledged that an individual’s attitudes, values, beliefs, risk perceptions and behav- iours, called safety climate, are behind most occupational accidents. Employees’ actions or inactions based on their perceptions, values and beliefs about Safety Management Systems (SMS) will have a positive or negative influence on safety performance in any industrial setting [19]. Bigelow, as cited in Work [20] stated that “safety climate holds great potential in PLOS ONE Safety climate in the printing industry PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278100 November 28, 2022 2 / 15