Ill-fitting clothing is unflattering. Ill-fitting shoes are uncomfortable and ill-fitting protective equipment is unfit for purpose and therefore unsafe. This fact is recognized in law.
For example, the law requires that almost all protective masks be face-fit tested to ensure that they provide e…
Health and safety and security threats are often either the same or very closely related. This means that by practicing good health and safety, you will often improve your security - and vice versa. Here are some tips to help.
Conduct regular assessments of your premises
Risk assessments are m…
Even though the average office is a whole lot safer than say, the average construction site, there are still a fair number of health and safety risks that need to be managed. Here are some of the most common and how to avoid them.
Slips, trips, and falls
These tend to be the number one health …
Even the smallest businesses have the legal responsibility to manage health and safety at work and are mandated to appoint a competent person to take ownership of fulfilling this obligation.
The definition of a competent person
A competent person does not have to be a qualified and dedicated h…
Modern day employees can receive training for site safety, fire safety, construction safety, food safety, and a million subjects besides. In short, safety is a pretty tightly controlled and well understood discipline. Yet many of the industries where health & safety training and protocols are most p…
Respiratory innovation is happening but in baby steps. Personal protective equipment is traditionally a low innovation area, but new advances in technology in the area of materials, fabrics and overall design have dramatically improved worker protection and user comfort. Disposable respirators have …
VOCs, or volatile organic compounds, are a family of chemicals that readily evaporate and turn into gases and vapour. Put simply, this means they give off odorous fumes and increase the concentration of potentially harmful chemicals in the air.
And in the modern age, they can be…
People who develop asthma because of the type of work they do have what's known as occupational asthma. It's actually referred to as adult-onset asthma and accounts for up to 15% of asthma cases in adults. What's more, it's believed that in certain industries, as many as 10% of workers develop o…
Promoting a strong health and safety (H&S) culture is not rocket science, but it takes time, effort and resources!
The overall culture in a company has a tremendous effect on the health and safety performance of employees. Culture is a notoriously tricky concept to pin down and fully unders…
Unfortunately, there are still a high percentage of employers who don't take safety seriously enough and are yet to embrace and appreciate the importance of occupational safety.
There is also by some a belief that providing a safe working environment is too expensive, they cannot justify the …
Now that the nights are drawing in and we’re all starting to think about turning the central heating on, the subject of workplace temperature becomes ever more important.
The relevant laws that govern indoor workplace temperature are set out by the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Reg…
Workplace injuries can pose very real dangers in our daily jobs, particularly when the task involves working high up on a building or other structure. Safety statistics make for grim reading, with accidents on building sites responsible for more than their proportionate share of all fatal injuries a…
Despite the European Union having a solid framework covering health and safety regulations at work, actual legislation and how it is enforced varies significantly between European countries.
Various bodies and people are held accountable differently in different countries, and some might appear t…
Achieving the appropriate qualifications for your job is challenging. You may have to study and train, while you’re working. Finding the time to balance both can leave you stressed out and, in general, tired.
But it is worth the investment, especially when your job requires health and safety kn…
A new link has been added to the Health and Safety Jobs page of the site; SafetyJobsOnline.com is linked to HealthandSafetyforBeginners.
SafetyJobsOnline offers jobseekers the opportunity to tap into a very different service from others you will find. As a jobseeker you can register on the site a…
Chessington World of Adventures has been sentenced for safety failings that led to a four-year-old girl suffering life-changing head injuries when she fell from a raised walkway while queuing for a ride.
The youngster, from Kent, fell nearly four metres while waiting in line for the Tomb Blaster ri…
Over the last 30 days, the seven most visited pages on HealthSafetyNews.co.uk were:
Employers, building owners and other people responsible for commercial buildings have a duty to put necessary fire safety precautions in place to all reasonable and practicable extents. This is seen in health law under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, which applies to all non-domestic…
Between April 2010 and March 2011, 50 workers were killed on UK construction sites. The construction industry accounts for just 5% of employees in Britain, but 27% of fatal injuries happen on construction sites.
When you look at the figures, it’s clear that construction sites are some of the most d…
If
you are an employer, you have responsibilities under the Health and Safety at
Work etc. Act 1974 to protect your staff and the public from hazards.
Electric shocks can result in injury or even instant death which means it’s in your interest to take the necessary precautions to minimise the …