PPE – Page 10 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Asbestos and corruption as a case study

Australia has been a major supplier of asbestos to the world for decades. It has also been a major corporate beneficiary of the revenue for the sale of this poisonous material.

The latest situation in Melbourne is a good example of all that is wrong with asbestos and worker exposure. According to reports in The Age newspapers in late October 2009, a property developer has allegedly offered $A57,000 to a safety officer on a hospital redevelopment project, allegedly, in order to turn a blind eye to the issue of asbestos at the site. According to the newspaper reports, some in the industry have described this payment as a bribe.

In February 2006, the developer received a report from an independent consultant advising that asbestos be removed prior to demolition. The developer removed most but not all. It is in this patch of remaining asbestos that two workers dug through the concrete with a jack hammer and concrete saw, generating considerable dust from the concrete and the asbestos. The workers were not wearing any protective masks.

Australia is dealing with the corporate immorality of James Hardie Industries, although there is much more that can be down. Wittenoom is closed and has almost disappeared. Companies are required to have an asbestos register for their properties. Tasmania is to become free of asbestos by 2020. There is a lot of activity, so much that the control of this poisonous material should not be handled in an ad hoc manner. Governmental vision is required to commit to the removal of asbestos and the clean-up of contaminated sites.

It is an easy moral call for governments – the toxicity of asbestos is indisputable, the public health risks are known. But it will cost. Governments are in a similar bind as with climate change policy – decades of prosperity at the same time as not considering the health legacy of that wealth.

There is no such thing as an emissions trading scheme for asbestos. It is suspected that, if at all, the government will need to apply surcharges or tax incentives for companies to support any initiative. This always flows back to the consumers paying ultimately. Anti-asbestos advocates can rightly feel angry at the fact that companies have benefited greatly from knowingly selling a toxic material, and the same companies are likely to benefit again through the clean-up. This may simply be the price we must pay for living in a society based on capitalism. God help the new “capitalist” nations like China.

Kevin Jones

SafetyAtWorkBlog hopes to finalise a podcast with journalist and author, Matt Peacock, by the end of this week. Peacock is the author of Killer Company

When ATV helmets are “best practice”

A recent media statement from the New Zealand Department of Labour on all-terrain vehicle (ATV) safety is annoying and disappointing.

On 15 September 2009, the Palmerston North District Court today fined farmer Trevor Mark Schroder $25,000 and ordered him to pay reparation of $20,000 to his employee John Haar over an ATV accident on 26 November 2008 that left Mr Haar with serious head injuries.

Dr Geraint Emry, the DoL Chief Adviser for Health and Safety, says

“…Mr Haar was riding an ATV supplied by Mr Schroder when he apparently drove into a wire used to direct cows into specific areas of the farm. Mr Haar had not been wearing a helmet and the severity of his injuries increased as a consequence. Nor had he been told that the wire he rode into had been put across the race.”

The statement goes on to state

“The Agricultural Guidelines – Safe Use of ATVs on New Zealand Farms – advise that the wearing of helmets by quad bike riders is considered best practice.”

SafetyAtWorkBlog strongly knows that New Zealand is very active in ATV safety but finds it hard to believe that the “wearing of helmets…is considered best practice”. This admits that, in using ATVs, personal protective equipment is the best hazard control option available.

The guidelines mentioned above are from 2003 and do mention ROPS:

“Until such time as there is evidence to the contrary, farmers have the right to choose whether or not they fit ROPS to their ATVs.”

The NZ DoL and, by inference, the Chief Adviser are quoting a 2003 guideline as best practice in 2009?!

Relying on helmets may be the reality but is also an admission of defeat with ATV designers and manufacturer. In many circumstances ATVs cannot be fitted with roll-over protective structures (ROPS) due to the nature of the work – orcharding for example. But Australia and New Zealand insist on ROPS for tractors, with similar criteria and exceptions to ATVs.

In one ROPS FAQ from the NZ DoL it says

“Evidence both in New Zealand and overseas has shown that the risk of injury in a tractor overturn can be substantially reduced when the tractor is fitted with ROPS of the appropriate standard.”

and

“Where the nature of the operation makes it not practical for ROPS to be fitted to an agricultural tractor, then, under the terms of this code of practice, the General Manager, Occupational Safety & Health Service, may issue a notice excluding the tractor from the requirement to have a ROPS.”

Some States in Australia have had rebate schemes for ROPS for many years.

It is suggested that a better level of driver protection from rollovers is evident on forklifts through the use of seatbelt and an integrated protective structure. Applying logic to safety is fraught with danger but the rollover hazard is the same whether in a warehouse or a paddock and having only a helmet for a forklift driver would be absurd and unacceptable. Why is only a helmet considered best practice for ATV drivers?

Rather than comparing ATVs to motorcycles as in this 2003 report, the comparison should be between ATVs and tractors or, maybe, forklifts.

The New Zealand Transport Agency says this about ROPS and ATVs in June 2008:

Many ATVs have a high centre of gravity, and are prone to tipping over when cornering or being driven on a slope. Rollover is the leading cause of injury associated with ATVs – riders can be crushed or trapped under an overturned machine.

If you attach a rollover protection structure (ROPS) to your ATV, make sure it’s securely fastened, doesn’t interfere with rider mobility and doesn’t raise the ATV’s centre of gravity. Contact OSH for guidelines on how to fit ROPS safely, and make sure the ROPS is strong enough to protect you.

So why aren’t ROPS considered best practice by the DoL?

The ATV injury case quoted above is unlikely to have occurred if the ATV had some form of structure around the driver or, admittedly, the wire was more visible or known to the driver. The relevance in this case was that the helmet most probably reduced the severity of the injury but would not have avoided contact with the wire.

Research is occurring on ROPS for ATVs but the rollover hazard has existed for as long as ATVs have existed. Are ATVs simply unsuitable for the work they are being used for? Is the design wrong for workplace use? Are they being advertised or promoted for inappropriate use? Should farm workers be encouraged legislatively or financially to fit ROPS? Perhaps the only safe ATV is a tractor?

Is the requirement for ROPS for tractors, but only helmets for ATVs, an acceptable double standard for workplace safety?

Kevin Jones

Safety signs – fact and fiction

A while ago I had a gig where one of the aspects of the job was researching how safety signs work, are read and responded to. Here’s a snapshot of some facts and fiction about safety signs.

Fact: If people don’t know the reason for a safety sign, they will probably ignore it. A safety sign needs to be seen as a reminder about a danger and the associated injury precautions that should already have been discussed at a safety meeting or included in training. Workers need to understand the relevancy of a safety sign, and that includes getting info on what the danger really is. A related issue is that research on how people respond to road signs found that likelihood of being hurt is a big factor in whether people take notice of a sign.* It’s reasonable to conclude there is a nexus with how people respond to safety signs generally; just telling people what to do is not enough, knowledge is essential.

Fiction: A safety warning sign is sometimes all that’s needed to cover the safety problem.

Fact: A safety warning sign is never enough to control a danger. If you’ve done nothing more than put up a warning sign to control a risk, it’s odds on you will be breaking the law. Don’t look at a warning sign as the end of the issue; look at it as the indicator that you know there is a safety problem in an area and that special safety precautions are needed and are in place. That’s exactly how the OH&S enforcement agency sees them. That latter point is worth thinking about if your workplace is a place that plasters safety signs up everywhere but doesn’t deliver on actual risk controls.

Fiction: The sign is permanent, so is the message.

Fact: Safety signs should be changed, repositioned and even re-coloured every now and then to make them noticeable. That old, grime covered sign plonked up on the wall becomes invisible eventually. People get used to seeing a sign, and the message stops registering. Try revitalising how the safety messages work. Try ways to get people to “connect” with their safety signs. One thing worth trying is to get staff to have a go at spraying up the safety message themselves. Use the key words on a commercially available sign, but let staff “funk it up” and get creative. That will make the sign more noticeable, more “real” – a very good thing. If producing a sign from scratch doesn’t suit, use customised sign options provided by most commercial sign suppliers.

Col Finnie
col@finiohs.com

* There’s a wealth of useful information in the 1998 research paper titled “Signs of trouble to come? A behavioural assessment of the effectiveness of road warning signs – Final Report”, Austin Adams, Jim Bright, Ben Searle, School of Psychology, The University of New South Wales.

Australian stun gun review report

Coincidentally after the SafetyAtWorkBlog article on the Braidwood Inquiry, the Queensland government investigation into the use of stun guns by police officers has been leaked to an Australian newspaper a day before the official release.

According to a media story in The Australian on 4 September 2009:

The joint Crime and Misconduct Commission-police review, launched after the June heart-attack death of north Queensland man Antonio Galeano, has ordered an overhaul of police training and operational policy, requiring the stun guns to be used only when there is a “risk of serious injury”.

The review, to be released today and obtained exclusively by The Australian, marks the first time an Australian authority has recognised the possibility the stun guns can injure or kill, especially when fired repeatedly at a person.

Within eight hours of the story above being released, a report, again in The Australian, but by a different writer, says:

“A CMC spokeswoman said the contents of the report were yet to be released but claims the weapons would be banned were untrue.”

The confusing reports may say more about journalism than stun guns but it also indicates the extreme sensitivity about the use of these items by emergency and security officers.

SafetyAtWorkBlog will include a link to the Queensland report once it has been publicly released.

Kevin Jones

UPDATE – Report released

The Queensland report into stun gun use has been released and is now available for download.

Thoughts on tasers and the hierarchy of controls

The Braidwood inquiry report into the use of energy weapons (tasers) is readily available on the internet. Regular readers of SafetyAtWorkBlog would know that I consider tasers to be a item of personal protective equipment (PPE) for enforcement officers.

Determining whether PPE is the most appropriate hazard control measure usually involves the application of the Hierarchy of Controls. The hierarchy is not applicable for all workplace hazards, particularly in the control of psychosocial hazards, but it’s a good place to start.

While reading the executive summary of Canada’s Braidwood report, one part in particular reminded me of the hierarchy – page 17.

Although the definitions for “assaultive behaviour” in both use-of-force continuums can be traced back to the Criminal Code’s language for common assault, they also justify use of the weapon when there has been only an attempted common assault, and even when no criminal offence has been committed. I concluded that the subject behaviour threshold should be met when the subject is causing bodily harm or the officer is satisfied, on reasonable grounds, that the subject’s behaviour will imminently cause bodily harm. Even then, an officer should not deploy the weapon unless satisfied, on reasonable grounds, that no lesser force option would be effective, and de-escalation and/or crisis intervention techniques would not be effective.

Let’s see if the hierarchy can apply.

Can the subject behaviour be eliminated? – No

Substitution doesn’t seem relevant.

Can we engineer out the threatening behaviour? – Barriers, shields… perhaps but the presence of these items may also inflame the behaviour, increasing the hazard.

Can administrative controls be applied to the hazard? Unlikely, unless the subject was cooperative or able to accept instruction or read signs, in which case, the hazard may not exist.

That leaves PPE, in this case a Taser.

The report places a considerable number of criteria that the enforcement officer must apply prior to using the taser and these should be considered administrative controls but as these apply to the enforcement officer and not the subject, they would not come under the hierarchy of controls.

I welcome readers comments on this rumination on Tasers as PPE, and/or the application of the Hierarchy of Controls to a police situation.

Kevin Jones

Research review of influenza and noise-induced hearing loss

The Cochrane Library has long been a good source of research information. Recently, the library undertook reviews of some of the seasonal influenza intervention and have produced a short podcast on the research.

Also, the Library looked at noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). The importance of this condition is high due to the damage being irreparable. In some countries, regular occupational hearing tests are a regulatory requirement in some industries and the research review did find some low-level research that supported hazard control through legislation. The review says

“There is contradictory evidence on the effectiveness of hearing protection and hearing loss prevention programmes. Higher quality prevention programmes and better implementation of legislation are needed.”

There was some support for the efficacy of PPE but training in the proper use of earplugs increased the benefits considerably. Those readers who are in the mining industry may find the NIHL podcast particularly useful.

These reviews are of rsearch studies and are not research in themselves, but they are useful summaries of a current state of knowledge on particular matters. Always look to the original data source if you wish to initiate prevention strategies or, better yet, contact you local OHS regulator and apply for a research grant so that you can generate research that meets the OHS needs of your industry.

Kevin Jones

Nanotechnology safety – literature review

Earlier in June 2009 The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work released a literature review entitled “Workplace exposure to nanoparticles”

The EU-OSHA says

“Nanomaterials possess various new properties and their industrial use creates new opportunities, but they also present new risks and uncertainties. Growing production and use of nanomaterials result in an increasing number of workers and consumers exposed to nanomaterials. This leads to a greater need for information on possible health and environmental effects of nanomaterials.”

The report is available for download by clicking on the image in this post.

Kevin Jones

Category: PPE

Asbestos and corruption as a case study

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When ATV helmets are “best practice”

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Safety signs – fact and fiction

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Australian stun gun review report

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Thoughts on tasers and the hierarchy of controls

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Research review of influenza and noise-induced hearing loss

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Nanotechnology safety – literature review

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