Category: death

Stats show quadbikes remain the leading cause of deaths on Australian farms

Dr Tony Lower, Director of the Australian Centre for Agricultural Health and Safety has released his review of farm safety incident statistics for 2015.  According to a media release (not yet online), Dr Lower found

“…there were 69 on‐farm injury deaths. The main causes continued to be quads, accounting for 15 cases (22%), with two of these involving children. This is the fifth year in a row where quads have been the leading cause of non‐intentional injury deaths on Australian farms.” Continue reading “Stats show quadbikes remain the leading cause of deaths on Australian farms”

Two apocryphal Santa safety tales

Safety Lesson 1 – Check Santa’s Constitution

As a child I lived across the road from a carpet factory.  This huge factory had a wide paddock next door that, for a time, had two golf fairways and greens and a chicken farm.  This paddock was the scene of the annual Christmas Party and, although my parents had no association with the factory, some of the neighbourhood kids wangled our way into the work’s Christmas Party.

One year the company chose to have Santa arrive by helicopter.  We could hear the noise from some way off and a landing site in the paddock had been roped off.  It didn’t take long for the noise from the children, already hyperactive on sugary drinks in a hot Australian Summer, to match the helicopter’s noise as the children ran to the roped area.

The helicopter lands, the propellers wind down as the children’s cheering increases.  Continue reading “Two apocryphal Santa safety tales”

Left in the abyss – the impact of a workplace death on relatives

In 2013, the University of Sydney established a research project into how workplace deaths affect the families of deceased workers.  In its information to participants, it stated:

“We are inviting you to participate in a study investigating the consequences of workplace death for surviving families. It will also consider how well official responses, such as workers’ compensation the provision of information and support, meet families’ needs. The aim is to identify improvements that will help to better manage the consequences of workplace death for surviving families.”

Two years later, the researchers have released some interim data.

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Beware the power of words

Occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals are being encouraged to think differently about safety and to focus on the positives instead of the failures, the leads instead of the lags. This needs to be supported by how we describe workplace incidents and in this context the profession can learn from one aspect of the debate on family violence in which Australia is currently engaged.

One example is available in this article from Women’s Agenda.  In it Editor Jane Gilmore writes about how the death of a women, murdered by a man, was described poorly by a newspaper.  The headline removes the perpetrator from the action. Continue reading “Beware the power of words”

OHS is in sports but by another name

After writing a recent article about the relevance of occupational health and safety (OHS) laws to sporting clubs, I attended a sports medicine seminar to access a different perspective on workplace safety.

2015-09-21 18.43.15Having never played sports outside the obligatory high school activities, which in my high school also included snooker?!, the world of locker rooms and team sports is foreign.  But earlier this week I learnt that where OHS professionals talk about productivity, sportspeople speak of performance, and where factories address line speed, sports physicians talk of load management.  I also learnt that professional sportspeople are exempt from workers’ compensation.

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