risk – Page 31 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Engineered stone and deadly silica risks seem here to stay

So Australia did not ban the importation of engineered stone. The Heads of Workplace Safety Authorities (HWSA) have issued a Communique and a joint media release outlining their decision. It’s a political slap in the face to the trade unions who went hard on the ban.

Many organisations supported the call to ban the importation and use of engineered stone due to the unacceptable risk associated with cutting the product. Many were strident in need for the ban. Even the Federal Minister for Workplace Relations, Tony Burke, was talking tough on the morning of the critical meeting of the Heads of Workplace Safety Authorities. So what went wrong?

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Plenty of sparkle but little spark

The latest awards night for WorkSafe Victoria achieved its scope – present awards for people and organisations who do occupational health and safety (OHS) well. Some categories are for extraordinary effort, achievements or innovation, and winning any award from WorkSafe is important to the winners, but some were flat.

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Silicosis campaign is about safety but is also about politics

The calls for banning engineered stone‘s importation are curious and likely to be acted on later this week.

Politicians, unions and some OHS associations have undertaken a risk assessment and determined that elimination is the most effective harm prevention strategy. Previous risk assessments of silicosis have been reported on in this blog for some time without banning the material. The risks have not changed even with increased inspection and enforcement. So what has changed? Politics.

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When empathy is also harmful

One of the favoured characteristics of a successful corporate leader is empathy for those under one’s duty of care. The logic is, if you care about your workers, you will look after them and prevent them from harm. But in some jobs, the empathy needed to do the job well also exposes workers to psychosocial harm. This issue of vicarious trauma is an element of our increased attention to workplace mental health and is receiving global attention.

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Research indicates OHS strategies

Last week, the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research (ISCRR) conducted presentations of its latest research programs. Those projects included:

Vicarious Trauma
Evaluating Pilot Programs
Bitumen Fume Exposure
Systems Thinking

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Excellent (and free) Australian guide on psychosocially healthy workplaces

Readers have shown considerable interest in the EU-OSHA e-guide for psychosocial health at work. A similarly formatted document has been released by Workplace Health and Safety Queensland in support of the new “Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work Code of Practice 2022“. The Mentally Healthy Workplaces Toolkit is an interactive PDF slightly more sophisticated than the EU document through its extensive use of hyperlinks to external information sources.

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Plain psychosocial health guide has great potential

Recently the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work released an “e-guide” on managing stress and psychosocial risks at work. It offers a radical contrast to some of the information on risks and burnout that originate from the United States.

The e-guide is really a PDF file that uses the software’s features to establish links between the table of contents and relevant pages of information. This is a little “old school” but the Agency often does this, I think, to allow for wide distribution and easy application.

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