Evaluation of work health and safety under legal scope in forest harvesting

For employees serving in various fields from staff in office, to worker in workplace or to the driver in vehicle, there are many elements threatening the health and safety of the employees in workplaces. By work health and safety services and the risk assessments, the risks are tried to be minimized in a controlled manner. However forests, which are one of the important natural sources of our world, include many activity areas (working style) due to the properties they have, therefore forestry studies are conducted in various conditions and areas. Some important features of forestry labor are that forest works cover a wide area and proceed under changing conditions, work amount and time is stable, the material subject to work and place is not constant, it is assumed to be a heavy duty so occupational accident rate is high, great freedom is granted to the worker in the organization of the work. For this reason and due to the different properties of forestry sector in terms of working life, legislation provisions cannot be sufficiently applied and the conducted work health and safety studies cannot go beyond creating awareness on this field. The aim of the study is to evaluate the developments on work health and safety in forest harvesting sector under legal scope, to research what kind of activities or policies are created for preventing or minimizing the risks, to emphasize the different working conditions demonstrated by forestry work field and to ensure the submission of suggestions. Keywords: Working life, Work health and safety, Legislation, Forestry, Risk