risk – Page 163 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Laboratory safety begins with design

Laboratory safety is often treated as a specialist area of occupational safety due to the potential harm from the material being handled but also because the laboratories often exist in universities, isolated work environments in many ways. Kansas State University (KSU) is obviously very proud of its Biosecurity Research Institute that, it claims, has considered all elements of safety in all stages of construction and operation.

BRISafety — A researcher works with materials in a biosafety cabinet in the Biosecurity Research Institute at Kansas State University. A biosafety cabinet is a safety enclosure that uses HEPA filters and directional airflow to contain pathogens.

The article that KSU has released on line is a little promotional in tone but there is enough information in it to illustrate the high level of planning that was given to the project. There may not be much new information for those already involved in laboratory safety but it is a useful example of the need for preparatory work in establishing a safe working environment that also ensures product integrity.

Kevin Jones

Safety rationalisation doesn’t end with an improving economy!

Guest contributor, Gerard May, writes

The economic circumstances an organisation finds itself in can greatly affect their approach to workplace health and safety. Tough economic times are still ahead for some industries and organisations, while others who rationalised for survival through the global financial crisis will begin to prosper. This article will delve into what may be happening to Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) in organisations heading into both tough and improving economic times. The economy will play a role.

Rationalisation in the manufacturing industry appears likely as the Australian Industry Group’s Performance of Manufacturing Index showed nine out of the 12 sub-sectors in the industry went backwards in December 2010[1]. Pricewaterhousecooper‘s (PwC) Australian-based global head of industrial manufacturing, Graeme Billings, recently stated,

“In the face of…declines in activity and the continuing slump in new orders, it is imperative that businesses continue to search for efficiencies, improvements and innovative approaches to their markets, products and business models[2].”

OH&S will surely be in the sights of rationalisation in the sector.

Dust suppression innovation research

Many areas of Australia are flooded, sodden or just very wet in the middle of this Southern Hemisphere Summer. Many workplaces had been expecting to be wetting down worksites and roadways to suppress the dust. Instead the water carts are garaged due to mud. But the environmental and occupational hazard of dust remains a hazard.

On 13 January 2010, it was announced that the Australian Coal Association Research Program will provide almost a quarter of a million dollars over two years to research the suppression of dust by synthetic means. This is a good initiative and one that could benefit many mining and non-mining workplaces but the issue of dust suppression with material other than water has raised environmental and health issues in the past.

Some background to the research report mentioned by Dr Nikki Williams of the NSW Minerals Council in her media release is available from this link to the NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water (DECCW). Continue reading “Dust suppression innovation research”

How much significant information do workplace fatalities provide?

Workplace fatalities are terrible, lingering tragedies that generally don’t teach anything new about OHS failures. I couldn’t find anything new in the frightening detail in the article below (dated 14^th December 2010) or in scores of Google searches of industrial/occupational fatalities; though disease fatality epidemiology can be informative.

If all workplace fatalities in Australia were stopped overnight, most workers wouldn’t notice a single improvement in their own workplace. They’d still be working in the same cluster of hazards, useless risk assessments and a regular sprinkling of near misses and daily shortcuts. Despite regulators’ and politicians’ shrieks of dismay at workplace deaths, such fatalities don’t represent the main OHS problem at work.

If any regulator was informed in advance – in some detail – that in a particular industry there would be three fatalities in the next three months (or even intolerable risk) they wouldn’t know how to prevent them. Example? Think of the insulation program, which still has some way to go and a few more surprises in store. Example? Over the next six months there are likely to be 3-6 quad bike-related fatalities in Australia, mostly as a result of rollovers.

Or think of the value of risk assessments: example? Consider the 60,000-80,000 barrels (10,000 tons) of the most dangerous hexachlorobenzene (HCB) waste stockpiled and being repackaged (ultimately, drum to drum) by workers in a primitive work process at Botany Bay Industrial Park, Sydney. One of the world’s largest stockpiles of such dangerous wastes that no one around the world is prepared to handle. This is the only place I’ve ever had to wear two layers of protection to inspect. What has the regulator done? Continue reading “How much significant information do workplace fatalities provide?”

The Social Media is the Message

Melody Kemp in Vientiane writes:

The apoplectic brouhaha that greeted Wikileaks in the past few months has shown us the power of the internet to upstage, discomfit and enrage. Governments like corporations operate under a variety of ‘commercial-in-confidence’ scores, the cadence of which changes with the degree of self interest at hand. That Wikileaks has been disclosing documents for years is of no consequence to our reactionary leaders. Just as labour groups and activists, long been warning industry about workplace hazards, have been greeted with similarly leaden ears.

Earlier this year, a delegation of international labour activists and trade union leaders visited Laos. While being taken around various work sites by Lao trade union and government officials, they were horrified to find bags of asbestos labeled Produced In China in one roofing tile fabrication shop. They should not have been surprised. The nominal communist bloc states of Asia have close trade, military and strategic ties. In that bloc the proletariat has little status and, like mushrooms, are generally kept in the dark.

One of Lao’s four Vice Presidents is known to foster and enjoy close and at times unseemly business relationships with Yunnan, Continue reading “The Social Media is the Message”

Telling is better than being exposed

Many OHS laws place obligations on employers to notify regulators ( ) of any particularly serious (often defined) incidents. In many jurisdictions regulators are sometimes informed of work-related hospital admissions, for instance, even if employers do not notify. But there is substantial benefit in notifying the regulators early.

Anecdotal evidence shows that by facing up to the reality that an incident has occurred is less costly in the long term as this shows that one is aware of one’s OHS obligations and willing to apply them.

The wisdom of reporting incidents in a timely manner is perhaps illustrated by a 17 December 2010 article in The Age newspaper. It is rumoured that incidents involving apprentice tiler Kane Ammerlaan may not have been reported to the OHS regulator in Victoria, WorkSafe.

Prompt reporting may not have been able to improve Ammerlaan’s situation relating to the fall but investigations into this possibly life-changing incident could have begun much earlier, and when evidence was easier to collate.

Ammerlaan also alleges that:

‘Through my six weeks I was constantly abused. There was a lot of verbal abuse; they’d throw stuff at me; I was shot with a nail gun on a few occasions.”

This may raise, yet again, the safety issue of the treatment of young workers and apprentices; an issue on which the community seems to require regular reminding.

Kevin Jones

Make buying a business a safe choice

A recent prosecution by SafeWorkSA illustrates an odd situation but one of considerable importance.

The media release of 15 December 2010 reports on the the penalties given to Hermes Precisa Pty Ltd (A$24,600) and Salmat Document Management Solutions Pty Ltd (A$22,400) for breaches of OHS law in May 2008. The circumstances of the offence are:

” A male plant operator was working with a large guillotine to remove the spines from stationery, when his fingertips were crushed by the clamp of the machine, necessitating their eventual amputation. He remains employed by the company.

The investigation revealed that the employee had received only verbal training and instruction on the use of the machine, and was required to use a wooden block to square up stacks of papers that were to be trimmed.

SafeWork SA told the court that the wooden block was insufficient to protect the worker’s hand and neither company provided safe systems of work for the task involved. A purpose-built blocking tool that did protect the operator’s hand had been lost a year previously. “

The obvious lesson from the incident is in the last paragraph – maintain safety equipment and replace what is broken or lost.

But the curious element of the prosecution is that it is rare for two companies to be prosecuted and guilty for the one offence. Continue reading “Make buying a business a safe choice”

Category: risk

Laboratory safety begins with design

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Safety rationalisation doesn’t end with an improving economy!

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Dust suppression innovation research

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How much significant information do workplace fatalities provide?

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The Social Media is the Message

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Telling is better than being exposed

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Make buying a business a safe choice

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