Rumours of a TV report on the increasing hazards of silicosis have floated around for a week or so. On October 10 2018, the show appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s 7.30 program. But the story is much bigger than the ten minutes or so on that program.
The focus is understandably on silica but perhaps that is too specific. Maybe the issue of dust, in general, needs more attention.
However,
Occupational health and safety (OHS) related decisions are made on the state of knowledge about hazards and it is up to OHS people to make sure the state of knowledge is at its best so that the best decisions can be made. But what do you do if the state of knowledge on a hazard seems to be made purposely uncertain and that uncertainty is leading to the status quo, which also happens to provide a huge income for the owner of the product creating the hazard.
This seems to be a situation at the moment in Australia in relation to the use of the weedkiller, glyphosate, marketed heavily by the global chemical company, Monsanto. The alleged corruption of data on which OHS people and workers base their safety decisions was perhaps one of the most disturbing elements of the recent ABC Four Corners program on the chemical (
At the end of September 2018 the Australian Psychological Society held its 2018 Congress. As conferences do, various media statements are released to generate interest in the speakers. One caught the attention of this blog. It was released on September 25 2018, and was called:
“Resilience isn’t enough to combat the effects of burnout, world renowned psychology expert says”
This sounded like it may look closely at the prevention of harm and SafetyAtWorkBlog was able to interview that world-renowned psychology expert,
The Safety Institute of Australia (soon to be trading as the Australian Institute of Health and Safety) conducted its Perth Safety Symposium on September 28 2018. It was the event’s second year and, overall, was a success. But how does one measure the success of a one-day conference?
Firstly, one has to have an interesting and, if possible, fascinating pool of speakers. The keynote speakers included:
Simon Millman MLA represented the West Australia Premier Continue reading “Mixed bag conference format succeeds”
The 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association in Florence Italy recently concluded. Australia’s Professor David Caple attended and brought the latest research into the benefits of sit/stand desks to the September meeting of the Central Safety Group in Melbourne. Caple said that evidence remains confusing on this increasingly popular piece of office furniture and echoed the modern approach to occupational health and safety (OHS) matters – look at what the work involves and how and where people do it.
Caple explained how large companies are moving away from open-plan offices to those designed around “activity-based work or
Every man is aware of his penis and scrotum from a very early age. Male genitals do not feature often in discussions about occupational health and safety (OHS) but there was a workplace incident in the United States around 1970 that gained considerable attention but not really from the OHS perspective. I have always thought this incident would be a useful case study for discussing how this scenario would be managed today.
In 1991 the journal “Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality” Dr William A Morton Jr. wrote of an unusual medical case. Basic a worker ripped open his scrotum while using a conveyor belt to masturbate. He was so embarrassed about the incident, he stapled his scrotum back together and told no one of the incident. I encourage readers to go to the full article at Snopes.com (some may find the details confronting), where Snopes verified the truth of the story, but the industrial crux of the incident is: Continue reading “Could your company manage an embarrassing workplace injury?”
Canadian safety professional, Eldeen Pozniak, has been touring the Australian and New Zealand occupational health and safety conference over the next few weeks. I was able to have a coffee with her earlier this week in Melbourne where we talked about