At the end of The Day of The Triffids, John Wyndham, had mankind living on the Isle of Wight, making sure that Triffids did not infest the island. Tasmania has a similar mindset as can be seen by its diligence on keeping the land free of foxes but that is keeping out a hazard. The greater challenge is renewing … Continue reading “The “Triffid defence” applied to asbestos”
Last month Joe Catanzariti of the Australian law firm, Clayton Utz, wrote a short article that links two OHS issues in a manner that others should follow. Catanzariti made the jump from a prosecution under current New South Wales OHS legislation (according to many the most draconian in Australia) to identify how such a decision would be made under the harmonise OHS … Continue reading “Case study of existing hazards in the new legislative context”
On 15 March 2010, the National President of the Safety Institute of Australia (SIA), Barry Silburn, distributed an email to the 3,600 SIA members strongly refuting the “unsubstantiated claims of irregularities” that were, apparently made by Gavin Waugh, Western Australian Division President and former National Secretary, in a member discussion forum and email circulated to … Continue reading “Abuse, egos, corporate governance and the safety profession”
Chris Lehmann of Tradesmen on Time submitted a letter to the editor of the Australian online newsletter Crikey. In the letter he wrote of how impractical the Federal Government’s audit of houses with foil insulation will. Lehmann explained to SafetyAtWorkBlog that the insulation properties of foil insulation comes from being installed across the ceiling joists and establishing … Continue reading “A sparky’s take on roofing insulation risks”
Machine guarding is one of the most effective and longstanding control measures for occupational hazards. Sometimes safety people even get excited about them. Equally safety people, regulators and magistrates, get angry when the guards are left off. One company in South Australia on 1 February 2010 received two penalties for similar hand injuries that occurred … Continue reading “No guard = hand injuries + $50k penalty”
On 11 January 2010, the Tasmanian Workplace Relations Minister, Lisa Singh, announced a new safety focus on the abalone industry following the findings of a coronial inquest into the death of David Colson in 2007. There are several interesting elements to the Minister’s decision. Firstly and, perhaps, most importantly, the decision shows the significant role that Coroners in … Continue reading “Risk/Reward trade-off”
In 2007, according to the ABC news site, “42-year-old Geoffrey Johnson [died after he] inhaled toxic fumes from paint stripper when he was cleaning the inside of a large chemical tank”. On 16 December 2009, his employer, Depot Vic P/L, was fined half a million dollars over this breach of the OHS legislation. Initial reports … Continue reading “Unique company response to confined space penalty”