agriculture – Page 10 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

NZ announces inquiry into the safety of farm vehicles

The New Zealand Department of Labour (DoL) has announced a period of public consultation on its OHS guidance on the safe use of off-road vehicles. The process will include a review of “Safe Use of ATVs on New Zealand Farms: Agricultural Guideline” publication.

Interestingly the DoL says it

“is looking to extend this publication to apply to the agricultural, forestry and adventure tourism industries.”

There is a potential for a considerable broadening of OHS issues but this may be hampered by the scheduling of the public consultation. The DoL public commentary period closes on February 13 2010. Both Australia and New Zealand are in Summer holiday mode and many companies are closed down for several weeks in January or operate on a skeleton staff. SafetyAtWorkBlog has commented on this trend for short consultative periods over the Christmas break previously. Continue reading “NZ announces inquiry into the safety of farm vehicles”

Coordinated raid on illegal workers in Australia

Illegal migrant workers are not a big problem in Australia. Those who are caught are usually working outside of the allowances of their tourist or student visas. Being an island nation and the bottom of the world, Australia does not have border protection issues to the extent of the United States or Europe.

That’s an odd way to begin an article, particularly one of occupational health and safety but there is a relevance.

The issue of migrant workers came up following a media statement from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship on 14 December 2009.

“…..10 people [working]on a farm at Carcuma, near Coonalpyn in the South Australian Mallee region [were detained]….

[the group contained] eight Thai and two Lao nationals who are now expected to be removed from Australia. …

Six of those located were unlawful non-citizens, two were student visa holders and two held tourist visas. …..

All are suspected of working illegally on the farm and investigations will now be conducted into their employment.” Continue reading “Coordinated raid on illegal workers in Australia”

Quad bike safety sensitivities

The quad bike safety issue is hotting up on a range of fronts in Australia with the trade unions taking an active interest, meetings between bike manufacturers and safety designers, and the SafetyAtWorkBlog email box filling up with background content and opinion.

One of these emails reminded me of some court action that was taken in 2005 by Honda against the Victorian State Coroner, Graeme Johnstone. Johnstone only recently retired from the position after many years and over that time there were fewer more ardent safety advocates, particularly not any that had the same broad audience and media attention.

In 2005 Johnstone was conducting an inquest into several quad-bike related deaths. At one point he approached a witness outside of the Coronial process to seek their assistance in a training course. Representatives from Honda took exception to this and began court action in the Supreme Court of Victoria to have him dismissed from conducting the inquests.

Justice Tim Smith found Johnstone remained open-minded and impartial throughout the inquest but the unreported judgement available online illustrates some of the tensions of the time and continue to exist to this day.

The judgement mentions the purpose of the inquest:

“The major disputed issues in the inquest relevant to the present application were the following:

whether the lack of roll-over structures on their ATVs caused the death of Mr Crole and Dr Shephard

whether roll-over structures should be installed on ATVs

whether the question of the provision of roll-over structures for ATVs should be investigated further.”

In describing the context of Johnstone’s contact with the witness, Dr Raphael Grzebieta, the judgement hints at the Coroner’s inquest findings (which are not available online)

“In addition, notwithstanding Dr Grzebieta’s conclusion that Dr Shepherd and Mr Crole [the deceased] would have been saved by the fitting of the roll bars and that this would be sufficient to justify a recommendation that they be fitted, the coroner expressed a provisional view that:

“My view at the moment is that it does not give me enough to recommend roll-over protection.””

The Victorian Coroner continues to be active in investigating quad-bike related deaths as seen in this newspaper article from earlier in 2009. A related article quotes John Merritt, WorkSafe’s executive director as saying:

“This inquest came about as a result of a terrible spate of fatalities in the past two years… WorkSafe’s position on this is clear. It believes that a quad bike is like any piece of farming equipment and those who use them need the appropriate training to be able to use them safely.”

If a quad bike is like any other piece of farming equipment, the equipment designers would be reviewing their designs to minimise the risk of injury as the field bin and silo manufacturers have, or the milk vat designers have or the windmill manufacturers have or, indeed , as have the tractor manufacturers who actively promote the safety features of their new tractors.

The unreported Supreme Court judgement provides a good indication of the major players in the quad bike safety discussion, particularly the expert witnesses for and against.

Many of the issues are resurfacing because safety and work practices continue to change and the only satisfactory resolution is when hazards are controlled and harm is reduced and, hopefully, eliminated. 2010 in Australia looks set to be a year when quad bike safety gets a good going over once more.

Kevin Jones

Union OHS guru on quad bike safety

Yossi Berger, Australian OHS guru with the Australian Workers’ Union, has posted an article on the Croakey blog explaining his thoughts on the issue of quad bike safety.

Contradictions on endosulfan in fish hatchery

Earlier in 2009, SafetyAtWorkBlog reported on concerns over a possible cancer cluster near a fish hatchery in Queensland.

The final report of the Queensland Government’s inquiry, Noosa Fish Health Investigation Taskforce, is not due until February 2010 but the Federal Government’s Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority has released a statement entitled “Endosulfan Ruled out as a Potential Cause of Noosa Fish Health Issues”. In that article APVMA states

“The Noosa Fish Health Investigation Taskforce has at this point eliminated endosulfan as a potential cause of deaths and deformities at a commercial fish hatchery at Noosa in the six events being investigated. Endosulfan was not used by the neighbouring macadamia property during the period under investigation. There was also some suggestion that because the commercial hatchery uses river water and fish from the river in its operations, pesticides in the Noosa River may have been involved in the incidents reported. However, environmental monitoring of water from the Noosa River and its feeder lakes has not indicated that endosulfan is present at concentrations that would be harmful to aquatic life.”

The ABC reports on 7 December 2009 that

“…aquaculture veterinarian Associate Professor Matt Landos says there is new evidence that endosulphan may be a factor.

“The early reports from the task force did not identify endosulphan in any residue testing and as such it was considered a less likely potential cause,” he said. “However, recent testing has identified the break-down product of endosulphan in the middle of Lake Cootharaba – in the middle of the Noosa system.”

Matt Landos is a member of the Queensland Government’s taskforce.

Kevin Jones

Quad Bikes – industry response

On 30 November 2009, the CEO of The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, Andrew McKellar, responded to some of the issues raised in recent SafetyAtWorkBlog articles concerning the safety of quad bikes.

McKellar emphasised that a balanced approach to ATV safety discussions is required. He said:

“In terms of a statistical outcome, the results show that, on balance, [ROPS] does not result in a safer outcome, in some situations people are going to be killed where otherwise they would have been fine. In other circumstances, they will survive an accident or a rollover accident where they might have been seriously injured if they hadn’t had it…….There is no clear safety benefit from putting such structures on those vehicles.”

As has been shown in previous articles many Australian and New Zealand OHS regulators have not recommended ROPS for quad bikes. This indicates that there must be some convincing evidence that ROPS are inappropriate. But that leaves the same problem with quad bikes in 2009 that existed decades ago, people are becoming injured or are dying from the (mis)use of these vehicles.

In most other vehicle and manufacturing circumstances consistent misuse would indicate that the vehicle itself and the interaction between driver and vehicle requires considerable investigation and/or redesign. The investigation by Ralph Nader was referred to in an earlier article as an example of unsafe design being engineered out.

Equipment designers in a range of industries strive to make their equipment foolproof but there does not seem to be same motivation in the quad bike manufacturing industry which still advocates helmets as the best hazard control option. This option is supported by calls for safe driving courses and keeping within the manufacturers’ specifications.

Helmets may be best practice at the moment but it is hard to believe that that is where the situation should stay. By not progressing beyond this control option, manufacturers and safety regulators are focusing on rider awareness in a sector, agriculture, that is renowned for taking (inventive) shortcuts and whose principal workforce are men who have a macho dismissive attitude to safety. A new approach is required.

Kevin Jones

Australian research figures into quad-bike deaths and injuries

A SafetyAtWorkBlog reader drew our attention to a research report on quad bike safety by one of Australia’s most well-known researchers into agricultural safety, Lyn Fragar.

The report entitled “ATV Injury on Australian Farms – The Facts – 2006” details a compilation of police, hospital and injury data from many years concerning ATVs or quad bikes. Recommendations and observations are made but curiously the design of the vehicles is not considered as a contributory factor in rollovers and rollover protection structures are not mentioned.

Kevin Jones

Tag: agriculture

NZ announces inquiry into the safety of farm vehicles

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Coordinated raid on illegal workers in Australia

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Quad bike safety sensitivities

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Union OHS guru on quad bike safety

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Contradictions on endosulfan in fish hatchery

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Quad Bikes – industry response

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Australian research figures into quad-bike deaths and injuries

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