Everyone knows the safe lifting techniques – keep your back straight, keep the load close to your body and bend your knees – because they have done the proper training. Well scrap that training! According to new guidance from Workplace Health and Safety Queensland (WHSQ):
“The research evidence shows that providing lifting technique training is not effective in minimising the risk of injury from manual tasks.”
On 20 February 2017, WorkSafe Victoria issued a media statement about several recent fatalities. Below is the first couple of paragraphs with some highlighted text:
“Two men were killed and another suffered critical head injuries in three separate incidents at the weekend.
On Saturday, a man in his late 30s died when his quad bike overturned on a property at Reedy Flat, near Ensay, in east Gippsland. It has not yet been determined if the property is a workplace or a hobby farm.” (emphasis added)
Why was the status of the farm mentioned and how is this relevant?
Safety people love evidence, particularly evidence of hazards because evidence can validate what we thought we saw. Perhaps of more importance is evidence about what types of interventions work. A recent study into the prevention of workplace bullying (abstract only) held the promise of solutions, even though it was a literature review and of some…
Occupational health and safety (OHS) law in the United States has little impact on that of any countries outside of North America. But the response to those OHS laws by US and multinational companies indicates corporate approaches to workplace safety and this can spread round the world. The anticipated strategy to worker safety under the Presidency of Donald Trump is expected to be harsh, if he attends to it at all.
Brad Hammock, Attorney at US workplace law firm, Jackson Lewis P.C. (pictured right), told SafetyAtWorkBlog that
“There is a dominant view that there will be a weaker OSHA under the Trump presidency. This is driven largely by historical analyses of past Republican administrations and President Trump’s anti-regulatory rhetoric. I anticipate that OSHA will continue to be active, but will emphasis cooperative and voluntary programs over enforcement. In addition, I anticipate fewer large safety and health standards being issued under a Trump presidency. “
The evidence base for the workplace risks from prolonged sitting is still only just being collated. One of the latest research reports, in Preventive Medicine Reports, identifies two more clues to identifying these health hazards – the length of tenure and Body Mass Index (BMI) but the BMI is not what one would expect.
According to the article entitled “Office workers’ objectively assessed total and prolonged sitting time: Individual-level correlates and worksite variations“: Continue reading “New clues in prolonged sitting risks: tenure and obesity”
The Herald-Sun newspaper has released the final report into the mental health and suicide rate of Victorian metropolitan firefighters.
The report, authored by Dr Peter Cotton, found that the issues uncovered in the review of firefighters in the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) are not dissimilar from the findings of other inquiries into emergency service organisations like the police or the ambulance service.
I have purchased Kevin Burns’ book “PeopleWork” after receiving an email promotion but before I did I followed the link to his website and watched an embedded video where Kevin says:
“At no time in history have there been better processes and procedures in workplace safety and at no time in history have there been more certified safety professionals but at the same time the number of workplace incidents keep rising across the board.”
Any salesman is allowed some hyperbole but the last point does not stack up and is a bit confusing. For instance workplace fatalities have been declining in Australia for some decades but new work-related hazards are being acknowledged and existing hazards that were once dismissed are now being addressed. The number of certified occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals is irrelevant as the laws have existed for much longer and it is the laws with which employers must comply, not the advice of the OHS professional.
But Kevin Burns talks specifically about the number of workplace incidents and this is almost impossible to quantify.
Just after I purchased Kevin’s book I received a research paper entitled “