Category: evidence

Safety website says OHS association is heartless

Safety In Australia has posted an extraordinary article questioning the decision of the Safety Institute of Australia to proceed with a process to consider the expulsion of one of its members regardless of the member recently suffering a heart attack.

The article says that the SIA has received a doctor’s letter saying that Phil Kamay, the member in question, should not attend the special general meeting on health grounds but the SIA has decided to proceed regardless. Safety In Australia questions this decision on the grounds of fairness. It is unclear who, if anyone, will be presenting Kamay’s rebuttal of the accusations against him that have led to the expulsion moves.

On an unrelated note, it is understood that the SIA has two tables booked for Worksafe Victoria’s Safety Awards late next week and that Phil Kamay is a guest at one of those tables.

Kevin Jones

Computer simulations of quad bike risks do not reflect reality

Guest contributor David Robertson discusses the  differences between risk simulations and real risk data in relation to quad bike safety:

“The motion picture blockbuster “Avatar”, for the time we are in the cinema, would have us believe that Sam Worthington can turn into a giant blue man on a faraway planet.  James Cameron used computers to deliver us this illusion. In science (and particularly with safety) we must be able to distinguish between computers that are valuable tools and computers that don’t represent reality.  Dynamic Research, Inc.(DRI) chose 113 actual quad bike (ATV) accidents to simulate in a computer model.

The first table below shows the injuries DRI record as what really happened from all the 113 cases, but represented as approximate normalized injury cost (ANIC)*.   When DRI’s computer runs the same cases, one would expect a similar result.  The results are shown in the second table (ANIC), note the scale on the left has had to be changed (table 2 should be about 10 times taller if the same scale in table 1 was used) because head injuries rose from 360 points to well over 3000. Equally astonishingly is that abdomen injuries have vanished altogether and chest injuries dropped from 266 to a next to nothing (23). Asphyxiation was not even included in the computer model. Continue reading “Computer simulations of quad bike risks do not reflect reality”

Sticking to the big picture

I had cause to give some students an idea of how well OH&S is doing in Oz.  The aim was to give these people some big picture numbers that might help them counter the general view that OH&S is over-done, crippled with nanny state perspectives etc etc.

Initially I slipped into the mode we tend to use in OH&S-World of fiddling about with comparisons: looking at innumerable qualifiers to get a tight comparison, massaging the numbers endlessly.  Eventually I realised it just didn’t cut it.  Statistics over-worked just end up producing a mushy result. And if there is one thing people don’t need from OH&S it’s mushy results.

So faced with this I decided to step back and think of a Big big Picture bunch of numbers. Continue reading “Sticking to the big picture”

Safety begins to converge to focus on the individual

If further information about the increasing inter-relationships between psychosocial health and physical health, organisational culture and a worker’s mental  health was needed, a new study from Sweden provides convincing evidence.

The research, a study of 81 research projects into the links between psychosocial factors and musculoskeletal disorders, was reported in by Eurofound on 10 September 2010.  It found, among other issues that

“… The link between an unfavourable psychosocial environment and the prevalence of MSDs is well established, with a number of studies demonstrating that high stress at work is connected to increased risk of developing a musculoskeletal disorder. Continue reading “Safety begins to converge to focus on the individual”

Pressure grows for the release of oil drilling investigation

The Australian government has indicated that it will release a report into the Montara oil spill after the general election.  However the Australian election result remains in doubt and, therefore, still no report.

The frustration over this stalling has begun to appear in the very conservative Australian newspaper, The Australian Financial Review (AFR). Once the business and financial community start complaining, a government knows something is serious.

In the AFR editorial on 1 September 2010 (not available online),

“The Borthwick report is likely to make some tough recommendations on safety procedures to prevent another spill. The inquiry heard extraordinary evidence that crucial work programs on the rig were sometimes scrawled on a whiteboard. PTTEP has a promised to review its procedures in the light of the deficiencies raised at the inquiry, but the government should look further afield. It is hard to imagine that PTTEP was a totally isolated case.” Continue reading “Pressure grows for the release of oil drilling investigation”

Australian Noise report. Is anyone listening?

Safe Work Australia has released a very important report called “Occupational Noise-Induced Hearing Loss in Australia “.

The report confirms many of the challenges faced by OHS professionals. There is, among others,

  • An over-reliance on Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
  • Noise is not taken seriously
  • Effective noise control is undervalued
  • Small and medium-sized companies pay less attention to the hazard
  • Noise control is seen as expensive
  • As hearing damage cannot be repaired, it is seen as inevitable

The report provides a detailed profile of NIHL and many will find the report an invaluable to gaining more attention to control measures in workplaces but just as mental health is both an occupational AND public health matter, so noise is affecting our private lives just as much as it is in our work lives.

As with many government safety reports, change is likely to come not from the report itself but how the media, the community and the OHS professions use the information to affect change.

Kevin Jones

Death at work differs from work-related death

Often immediately following an incident, the safety manager receives a brief phone call “There’s been an accident.” Information is scarce and, in my experience, often wrong or more fairly inadequate. in OHS there will always be an assumption that an injury or death is work-related as that is our patch but people die every day and they can die anywhere, even in your workplace. Is this a workplace incident? Yes. Is it an occupational incident? not necessarily.

It is vital in those first moments of confusion and panic, not to jump to conclusions and rush out to the incident site. If it is your responsibility you will become involved but often, by asking a few simple questions, you are able to avoid this confusion and avoid worsening the situation by “butting in” where you are not needed.

I was reminded of this when reading about a coronial inquest into two suicides that occurred at an Australian shooting range in October 2008. These two incidents occurred at a workplace but not from work-related activities. There may have been some workplace management issues that, in hindsight, relate to supervision or security but these are the type of issues that the Coroner will investigate.

The deaths are reportable to the OHS regulators as they occurred on a workplace but it is unlikely that the regulator will put a lot of resources into the investigation given the Police and Coroner are investigating.

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