Category: hazards

Professor Niki Ellis speaks about OHS, CSR and resilience

Next week the National Comcare Conference is held in Melbourne Australia.  One of the keynote speakers at the conference is Professor Niki Ellis, a prominent Australian OHS researchers and consultant  who is also heading up the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research (ISCRR).

On a sunny September 5 2011 I was able to spend half and hour with Niki at a noisy cafe outside Victoria’s State Library talking about:

  • The profile of OHS is Australia as a profession
  • The importance of a practical application for OHS research (what Niki refers to as “interventionist research”)
  • The need for innovation in tertiary institutions
  • The legacy of Dame Carol Black’s UK report “Working for a Healthier Tomorrow“
  • The challenge for OHS professionals to cope  with emerging psychosocial hazards
  • The role and importance of Corporate Social Responsibility to workplace health and safety
  • The deficiencies of applying resilience to workplace mental health issues

Kevin Jones

Where is the evidence for the safety benefits of high visibility clothing?

Recently a local council in Australia suggested that bicycle riders should be required to wear high visibility jackets.  Bicycle Victoria was not impressed:

Bicycle Victoria spokesman Garry Brennan slammed the idea.

“Unfortunately there is no evidence that so-called ‘high-visibility clothing’ is of any benefit to bike riders,” Mr Brennan said. “Whether the rider is dressed in bright fluoro or black, or is stark naked, matters little when drivers are not paying attention.  The good news is that as more bikes crowd the roads, most drivers are paying more attention.”

In another article Brennan said

“It’s redundant and potentially misleading,” Mr Brennan … said.  He said high-visibility clothing would give cyclists a false sense of security.  “All it does is make you feel more visible,” he said.”

High visibility clothing is an established element of personal protective clothing on construction sites and in the transport industry.  It was introduced as a way of increasing the visibility of workers where traffic on- and off-site interacts with pedestrians.  A UK article by BrightKidz summarises the logic on high visibility clothing but is there any evidence that bright clothing reduces serious contact between pedestrians and traffic? Continue reading “Where is the evidence for the safety benefits of high visibility clothing?”

Farmer rescued from rare tractor rollover incident

Tractor rollovers are far less frequent in Australia than in previous decades due, principally, to major safety campaigns and financial rebates for the compulsory fitting of rollover protection structures (ROPS).  This fact makes the near death of a Victorian farmer on 17 August all the more surprising.

The most detailed report on the rescue, to the moment, is by Channel 7 but additional information is available from the ambulance service and through an audio statement* with the responding paramedic.  The Channel 7 reporter states that the tractor had no ROPS and this is true, to an extent.  SafetyAtWorkBlog has been advised that there was a ROPS for the tractor available on the farm but it had been detached.

At his early stage of the man’s recovery and incident investigation it is difficult to extrapolate OHS lessons or issues but any investigation is likely to ask about the risks of , amongst others,

  • working alone
  • the absence of ROPS
  • the competence of the “hobby farmer”
  • the working environment/terrain
  • the use of a trailer with this tractor.

It is believed that WorkSafe will be undertaking an investigation.

Kevin Jones

*very interesting social media initiative from the ambulance services

New quad bike poster establishes a safe operation benchmark

In July 2011, it was noted that the quad bike manufacturers had revised the wording of  their poster about quad bike safety.  The website that provided an online version of that poster is now under redevelopment.  However Australia’s Heads of Workplace Safety Authorities (HWSA) has released its own poster outlining the basic elements of quad bike safety in Australia and New Zealand.

The poster advises that:

BEFORE YOU BUY

Find out whether a quad bike is the best vehicle option for your farm.

Fatigue management is getting clearer but is competing for attention

As a discipline for study, fatigue still seems to be in its early days and this presents a challenge for safety professionals and researchers.  Everyone knows what fatigue is because at some time we all suffer it, but try to define it and it is different things to different people.

Transport Safety Victoria (TSV), a division of the Department of Transport, brought together three speakers on the issue of fatigue management in early August 2011.  The public seminar provided a good indication of the complexity of the occupational issue of fatigue management.

The first revelation in the seminar came from Dr Paula Mitchell who stressed that fatigue cannot be self-assessed.  Researchers are struggling to create a widely accepted indicator for fatigue.  There is no blood alcohol reading device for fatigue and the Independent Transport Safety Regulator in July 2010 expressed caution on the application of the bio-mathematical fatigue model. Continue reading “Fatigue management is getting clearer but is competing for attention”

Prompt investigation is essential to prevent injuries

Injuries at work are often dismissed as Report Only or other category that does not require an investigation.  But all incidents should be investigated and promptly.  A recent prosecution of a tuna company in South Australia illustrates this point well.

SafeWorkSA’s media release provides basic details:

“On the 23rd of January, a male employee suffered deep lacerations to his right index finger while attempting to clear a blockage of cardboard in a caser machine, which seals cardboard boxes.

On the 11th of February, a female employee suffered a serious hand injury when trapped by moving parts in the same unguarded opening of the same machine.

The male worker recovered from his injuries quickly, and but the female worker sustained serious bone, nerve and tendon damage, that left her right hand permanently impaired.”

The court was told that the investigation into the first incident was poor.  In fact the Industrial Magistrate, Stephen Lieschke, described it as “incompetent”. Continue reading “Prompt investigation is essential to prevent injuries”

Near miss incidents are the best opportunities from which to improve safety

One of the most frustrating parts of being a safety professional is that “near misses” or “near hits” or “close calls”, as some refer to them, are often neglected even when these events are often the best to investigate as no one was directly injured.

The significance of the near miss may be illustrated by a court case and penalty from South Australia on 28 July 2011.  The media release states that Kyren P/L was fined over $A40,000 after a dogbox fell over 30 metres without anyone being injured. (The full court decision is available online)

“In August 2008 at a building site in Coglin St. Adelaide, an attempt to lift a fully-laden work box (known in the industry as a ‘dog box’) to the seventh floor ended catastrophically when the tower crane failed sending the dog box into a 30-metre freefall. It landed in the laneway separating the site from an adjoining business.  A plastic bin beneath was crushed.  Some hoarding was damaged, and there was minor structural damage to the guttering of a neighbouring building which housed a law firm.

The prosecution arose after the investigation determined that two employees of the law firm were at risk of harm because their duties required accessing rubbish bins in the laneway.  However the defendant had failed to declare Continue reading “Near miss incidents are the best opportunities from which to improve safety”

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