Occupational health and safety (OHS) popped up in the Australian Parliament this week in odd, oblique ways. OHS was tied to asbestos imports, the Ensuring Integrity Bill, a construction company owner in Western Australia, and sexual harassment. Question and Answers On September 19 2019 several questions were put about the importation of asbestos containing products. …
Following on from the product safety theme in yesterday’s article, it is noted that the Australian Treasury has opened a consultation phase on improving the effectiveness of the Consumer Product Safety System. The report makes specific reference to workplace health and safety laws. This consultation is a direct result of the recent review of Australian …
Last week the Australian Government accepted the recommendations of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) about improving the safety of quad bikes. But the improvement in safety came not through occupational health and safety (OHS) laws but the Australian Consumer Law so how could the ACL help improve workplace health and safety further? After …
October is Australia’s workplace safety month. It operates under different names in different States, but they all started on October 1 2019. These months are almost exclusively about marketing and SafetyAtWorkBlog’s Inbox has received a lot of generic statements about the importance of occupational health and safety (OHS) but with little information about how to …
At the end of October 2019 the Australia New Zealand Society of Occupational Medicine (ANZSOM) will be conducting its annual scientific meeting in Adelaide. There are many issues on the agenda but silicosis is likely to figure prominently as it did last year, and as it should. The politics, knowledge and regulatory action has changed …
Government attention on the risks of silicosis, especially those related to engineered stone, continues to increase. Australia has established a National Dust Disease Taskforce to investigate the risks and to make recommendations to the government at the end of 2020. A national investigation is warranted but occupational health and safety (OHS) is regulated at State …
Professor Malcolm Sim of Monash University spoke at the 2019 National Work Health and Safety Colloquium on an issue that he never imagined he would be speaking of, at his age, silicosis. As it is in several countries, the emergence of silicosis related to synthetic stone is gradually getting the attention of governments as more, …