environment – Page 18 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

CSR in firing line on asbestos compensation

SafetyAtWorkBlog has not reported on the asbestos compensation problems faced by James Hardie Industries directly because in 2009, the issue is one of corporate responsibility more so than workplace safety. The reality is that asbestos kills and victims deserve compensation. The fact that asbestos companies are avoiding their responsibilities is of little surprise.

In Australia, most of the focus has been on James Hardie due, principally, to its corporate conduct to the Australian stock exchange and its prosecution by the financial regulators. But another asbestos miner and building product manufacturer is at the Australian Courts in December 2009.

In some ways, CSR Limited is the more notorious asbestos manufacturer due to its operation of the Wittenoom asbestos mine. It could be said that CSR is the James Hardie of the 1980s.

According to a media report in the Sydney Morning Herald, CSR is planning to demerge but the Federal Court has been told that the Australian Securities & Investments Commission believes that insufficient allowance has been made in the strategy for asbestos compensation.

CSR is splitting its sugar and renewable energies divisions away from the building products division where the compensation is likely to sit. The sugar business will be called Sucrogen.

For those who do watch the corporate manoeuvrings of asbestos manufacturers, CSR’s actions should be familiar but those new to the issue should look beyond James Hardie to gain fuller appreciation of asbestos and capitalism.

For a global perspective on the whole industry it is hard to go past “Defending the Indefensible” by Jock McCulloch and Geoffrey Tweedale.

Kevin Jones

Contradictions on endosulfan in fish hatchery

Earlier in 2009, SafetyAtWorkBlog reported on concerns over a possible cancer cluster near a fish hatchery in Queensland.

The final report of the Queensland Government’s inquiry, Noosa Fish Health Investigation Taskforce, is not due until February 2010 but the Federal Government’s Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority has released a statement entitled “Endosulfan Ruled out as a Potential Cause of Noosa Fish Health Issues”. In that article APVMA states

“The Noosa Fish Health Investigation Taskforce has at this point eliminated endosulfan as a potential cause of deaths and deformities at a commercial fish hatchery at Noosa in the six events being investigated. Endosulfan was not used by the neighbouring macadamia property during the period under investigation. There was also some suggestion that because the commercial hatchery uses river water and fish from the river in its operations, pesticides in the Noosa River may have been involved in the incidents reported. However, environmental monitoring of water from the Noosa River and its feeder lakes has not indicated that endosulfan is present at concentrations that would be harmful to aquatic life.”

The ABC reports on 7 December 2009 that

“…aquaculture veterinarian Associate Professor Matt Landos says there is new evidence that endosulphan may be a factor.

“The early reports from the task force did not identify endosulphan in any residue testing and as such it was considered a less likely potential cause,” he said. “However, recent testing has identified the break-down product of endosulphan in the middle of Lake Cootharaba – in the middle of the Noosa system.”

Matt Landos is a member of the Queensland Government’s taskforce.

Kevin Jones

Unintended consequences of inadequate preparation

The Australian Government instigated a rebate scheme for ceiling insulation for domestic homes in order to the climatic impacts of heating one’s home. The rebates effectively make insulation free and, as a result, there is a boom in insulation installation.

As with any boom in any industry, there is an influx of new workers. The Australian newspaper reports the death of an installer in Brisbane in mid-October 2009 and the shortcomings this death illustrates.

The article says that the rebate scheme has been so popular that fibreglass batts are not available so installers are using foil-based reflective insulation.

“Master Electricians Association president Malcolm Richards said the foil-based products should be banned in established homes because untrained installers were stapling foil on to live electricity wires. He said the practice was the cause of last week’s tragedy in Brisbane and electricians were being increasingly called on to repair dodgy work.”

Firstly, electricians are always being called on to repair the botched electrical work of others. Secondly, it’s not the fault of the foil suppliers so it seems unfair to ban a legitimate insulation product.

The Master Electricians Association is facing the problem that others face every day, unqualified workers doing the work normally undertaken by qualified workers.

The political opportunism by some in this article is regrettable.

The Australian Government should have learnt from its computers-in-schools initiative/debacle that there are ancillary costs with any government program and that these costs should be considered in the policy development and/or have relevant organisations consulted so that the necessary support services are prepared for the plan’s launch and operation.

The computers-in-schools program did not consider the software costs to use on the free computer for ever secondary school student. The LPG conversion rebate did not consider the scale of demand. The solar panel rebate scheme was cancelled even though the demand was great. The home insulation scheme has drawn inexperienced installers into the industry. All good intentions harmed through poor planning and some of that harm can be the death of workers.

Kevin Jones

Dusty switchboard safety alert

The Northern Territory’s WorkSafe authority issues safety alerts infrequently so each new one is worth considering. The alert released on 20 October 2009 concerns dust in exposed switchboard installed in remote locations.

The alert is worthy of attention for several reasons but one is that electrical work in isolated locations can often be less safe than similar tasks closer to urban areas. Some tradespeople in remote locations do only what they deem is necessary which is not always safe.

The other issue is identified in the alert itself. Dust in electrical circuits can be a hazard in many circumstances and should be considered when installing switchboards. The environment in which the electrical work is to be undertaken is an important consideration not only for the worker or tradesperson but also for the occupant of the house or the user of the article of plant, in the longer term.

Sometimes real bulldust is a greater hazard than political “bulldust”.

Kevin Jones

Evidence of heart attacks due to secondhand smoke

According to a media release from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in the United States, a new research report says:

“Smoking bans are effective at reducing the risk of heart attacks and heart disease associated with exposure to secondhand smoke, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. The report also confirms there is sufficient evidence that breathing secondhand smoke boosts nonsmokers’ risk for heart problems, adding that indirect evidence indicating that even relatively brief exposures could lead to a heart attack is compelling.”

The report claims to have undertaken “a comprehensive review of published and unpublished data and testimony on the relationship between secondhand smoke and short-term and long-term heart problems”. It has looked at “animal research and epidemiological studies” and “data on particulate matter in smoke from other pollution source”.

The study was sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which has summarised the report on a new webpage. SafetyAtWorkBlog has been unable to obtain a copy of the full report.

The report is unlikely to help those safety professionals who need to control the hazard of secondhand smoke in the workplace. Legislation has been in some States of America for over thirty years identifying where people cannot smoke and around the world the major control measures are moving smokers outside and encouraging them to quit.

The IOM report seems to confirm the seriousness of the issue but provides no new ideas for control. This would be like producing a new research report that says mercury, lead or asbestos are harmful – like duh?

US OSHA provides some data on legislative interventions on tobacco smoke but new information on this hazard in the workplace setting is thin. The US Cancer Institute issued a monograph in 1999 defining ETS as

“…an important source of exposure to toxic air contaminants indoors. There is also some exposure outdoors in the vicinity of smokers. Despite an increasing number of restrictions on smoking and increased awareness of health impacts, exposures in the home, especially of infants and children, continue to be a public health concern. ETS exposure is causally associated with a number of health effects.”

More recent monographs are available at the Tobacco Control Research site.

The UK Health & Safety Executive provides this specific environmental tobacco smoke advice

Employers should have a specific policy on smoking in the workplace.
Employers should take action to reduce the risk to the health and safety of their employees from second hand smoke to as low a level as is reasonably practicable.
Smoking policy should give priority to the needs of non-smokers who do not wish to breathe tobacco smoke.
Employers should consult their employees and their representatives on the appropriate smoking policy to suit their particular workplace.

The status of workplace smoking and secondhand smoke in most westernised countries seems to have plateau-ed or perhaps got to the point where every control measure that is reasonably practicable has been done.

That people continue to die directly and indirectly from tobacco smoke illustrates the flaw in the reasonably practicable approach to safety legislation and management which is “so what do we do next?” Perhaps the attention being given to nano particles may help but is it the particulates in secondhand smoke that is the problem or the fumes themselves? Regardless, a new approach is needed to control this persistent workplace hazard. Shoving smokers onto the streets and balconies is not enough.

Kevin Jones

Changing weather conditions can present unexpected hazards

In the south-east corner of Australia, a drought has existed for over a decade. This week in Melbourne, it has rained on and off for several days, changing the way the community is feeling. Farmers are happy, owners of rain water tanks are happy, gardeners are happy, even commuters who have to relearn how to drive in the wet are less complaining.

Some months ago, I spoke to a mother whose two-year-old daughter had never seen a heavy rainstorm, thunder or lightning. Early last year, a colleague and I looked out of an office building window on a 13th floor and saw smoke swirling round the city. It turned out to be rain but we had not seen rain for so long that we mis-identified it.

This morning, I was removing money from an automatic teller in the street and I was dripped on from the leaking roof of the bank for the first time ever. A local chemist had buckets on its floor to catch drips from the ceiling that they had never seen before.

Yesterday, 15 October 2009, a concrete pumper at a housing development site in Coburg sunk in some mud just enough to swing the pump’s hose into a worker, killing him. Other media reports say that a stand of the pumper may have malfunctioned.

There are always many lessons from workplace deaths but one to be taken from this incident is that external factors to the actual tasks in hand must be considered. Those factors, in this case weather and soil stability, can change within a work period and this variability of environment must be watched and anticipated.

Mud on a construction site is not a new hazard. But if a hazard is not always present or regularly encountered, it is easy to give it less attention.

Kevin Jones

Injuries cost business 6% of their profit

At The Safety Conference in Sydney in October 2009, Dr Ian Woods, a senior research analyst for AMP Capital Investors, will advise Australian employers that the cost of workplace injuries on their businesses could be around 6% of their profit.

According to a media release in support of the conference

Dr Woods signals three occupational health and safety costs of concern to investors: workers’ compensation premiums, indirect costs, and the costs of alleviating workplace incidents.

“The indirect and unbillable costs associated with workplace injuries are like an iceberg,” he says. “They represent a huge percentage of the total cost that’s impossible to assess until you run into trouble.”

“The disruption to production caused by workplace injuries cost Australian businesses an estimated $490 million in 2000-01. The extra administration cost another $360 million. Incidents can also trigger loss of goodwill, strikes, recruitment issues and dozens of other immeasurable costs. The United Kingdom’s Health and Safety Executive indicated that the cost of uninsured losses is 10 times the business cost of insurance premiums paid for the same period.

“An injury with $1,000 in direct claims costs will also bring about $5,000 of indirect costs. Assuming a 5% profit margin, that equates to $100,000 of turnover. This simple return on investment (ROI) illustrates how valuable preventive measures are to financial bottom lines.

“Still, there is more to investing than just the economic case for improving OH&S performance. As well as the economic costs, inequality of benefits, costs and suffering are key issues.”

Some of the concepts sound familiar. Around the turn of the century there was increasing interest in corporate social responsibility and ethical investments and OHS was mentioned regularly as a corporate element that investors would seriously consider.

A good example of the feeling at the time can be seen in a 2002 interview for SafetyAtWork magazine, Paul Gilding of ECOS Corporation* talked about workplace safety. He was asked about linking workplace safety with sustainable business.

PG: This is a real fascination for us. We first came across workplace safety as a major issue for one of our clients, DuPont, where safety culture is so embedded in their business that you can’t walk into their offices without picking it up. We realised that, as sustainability experts, we had hardly ever come across that issue. The people who talk about sustainability also talk about corporate social responsibility, human rights in developing countries, climate change, biotechnology, ethics, every issue you could think of but they very rarely, except in a token way, talk about workplace safety.

We first thought why should this be a sustainability issue and then we thought why wouldn’t it be? We’re talking about the way corporations behave, the effect they have on society, the effect they have on the community they work in, yet we’re not talking about the fact that they are killing and hurting their own people. This is a surprising omission when it is so fundamental to sustainability.

This perspective has transformed into the widespread advocacy of “safety culture”.

Around 2001 Westpac Banking Corporation was developing an OHS index that measured the share performance of the top 100 companies. Interest in this has faded over the last ten years to such an extent that it is difficult to locate any reference to it. However, the Westpac index was discussed at many OHS conferences at that time and gained overseas attention as shown in these comments by the former Director of EU-OSHA, Hans-Horst Konkolewsky to Safety At Work magazine in 2001. [Full interview is available]

Q: One of Australia’s major banks, Westpac, is establishing an OHS index that shows relations between this index, the All Ordinaries share index and a company’s share performance. Have you seen this sort of thing in the European region?

HHK: We haven’t seen it explicitly. This bank has taken the lead. I saw on my way to Australia that there seems to be an F4 investment initiative to assess companies’ performance but more broadly with environmental performance, social performance, child labour issues, but also safety and health.

This is one of the many ways we can improve awareness and create a preventive culture starting through the investment area. In Europe, we have had quite a number of different approaches where companies have issued social statements or accounts where they have informed about their employees’ satisfaction with their work, working conditions, customer satisfaction with servicing, their relationship to the society, activities related to employment problems and so on. There are a number of examples that point in the same direction.

I must say that I believe that this can be a rather strong movement if investors and customers, through their demands and market mechanisms, can improve safety and health.

A more detailed report that places OHS strongly within the CSR discipline is a 2002 report, now available through an Australian Government website, called “A capital idea -Realising value from environmental and social performance“.

Dr Wood’s presentation will build on these reports and the work of overseas OHS organisations in trying to provide a cost estimate for workplace injuries. Let’s hope that there are specifics and that there is enough audience enthusiasm to generate a sustainable interest.

Kevin Jones

* cannot verify that this report is still available online

Category: environment

CSR in firing line on asbestos compensation

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Contradictions on endosulfan in fish hatchery

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Unintended consequences of inadequate preparation

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Dusty switchboard safety alert

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Evidence of heart attacks due to secondhand smoke

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Changing weather conditions can present unexpected hazards

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Injuries cost business 6% of their profit

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