Loose safety regulation or awareness in production sites

In US industries and operations, PPE (personal protection equipment) such as safety glass have been required, highly regulated and audited by such as OSHA for personal safety. Employers are very seriously required to provide and train employees to use PPE for operation. Wearing PPE has been built in my mind as minimum requirement for any operation. However, the tight safety regulation and awareness may not hold true in business for rest of world.

During many production site visits in this international trip, I observed very commonly that no or minimum PPE were equipped or worn for even some high-risk operations. For example, I observed no one worn safety glass in metal grinding-welding operation in Slovenia exhaust factory, steel plasma cutting operation in Croatia Pula Shipyard, and melting glass operation in Venice. We, as visitors, were not provided safety glass either, and were guided through operation lines with potential hazard, such the flying sparks in the grinding-welding operation of Slovenia exhaust factory.

I think these observations indicated the loose personnel safety regulation and awareness in these regions. The lack of safety regulation may reflect less or minimum liability that the employers may hold against possible injured employee. The loose or no safety regulation may reduce short-term cost of business, but this may hurt them long-termly for lack of responsibility and possible injury of their highly skilled employees. For example, the ""master"" for Murano glass operations have been rare and training takes extremely long time. Injury of ""master"" may halt their operation. The region may need to tighten their safety regulation and awareness for long-term sustainability and success.