A Web of Resources

Some of you may already have seen the new RRC website which went live just before Christmas. The site has undergone a radical overhaul and now provides a wealth of information, both for RRC students, and for anyone with an interest in health, safety and environmental issues.

The RRC Training website still contains information on all of the courses we offer, allowing you to work out which courses are most suited to your needs, as well as providing you with the ability to book courses online. But the new site now offers you many more features, including:

• A weekly round-up of all the latest health, safety and environment news, so you are always up-to-date on the latest issues affecting the industry.
• Copies of RRC opinion pieces and articles that have appeared in leading newspapers and journals.
• Free downloads, including a free guide on the requirements of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and a look at the lighter side of health and safety with RRC’s HSE joke book.
• Amusing monthly podcasts.

RRC Developing Customer Service Excellence

RRC’s internal customer services department has recently been re-organised and expanded to enable us to improve the quality and level of service that we are able to provide for our students.

At the heart of the restructure is the appointment of three new graduate trainees. Since joining us in November all three have been following intensive training plans to impart the course knowledge and operational experience required to be rapidly effective in servicing students’ requests and queries.

Tutor Viewpoint - New and Expectant Mothers in the Workplace

Wendy Claxton BSc (Hons), Dip2.OSH, CMIOSH

Pregnancy is not an illness and any implications arising from pregnancy should be managed effectively through normal health and safety procedures. However, some employers are unsure as to what actions they need to take with respect to pregnant workers so as to ensure that they don’t place mothers or unborn children at risk. Consideration also needs to be given to employees when they return to work and if they are breastfeeding. Controls that are normally acceptable may not fully protect the new and expectant mother or their child and therefore further controls may need to be considered.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have defined “new and expectant mother” as:

In the News

Over a million students have chosen to study with RRC Training, so it was no surprise that the Daily Mail newspaper chose us as the starting point for locating a successful student who had achieved a promotion as a result of completing a professional health and safety qualification.

We identified RRC Training student Lorraine Prangnell, who was an Assistant Materials Buyer for building contractors within house builder Foreman Homes, when a job arose in the company for a Health and Safety Manager. Lorraine, from Fareham in Hampshire, was keen to take the role on providing she got the proper training to meet her skills.

Lorraine completed the NEBOSH National Certificate in Construction Safety and Health with RRC Training by distance learning and she passed with Credit. She is now the Health and Safety Manager for Foreman Homes, advising everyone from labourers on sites to the Company Chairman at head office on how to apply safety rules.

Lorraine is just one of many students who have achieved professional success as a result of completing a qualification with RRC Training (see our article on Justin Montellier, an RRC NEBOSH Diploma student). A recent survey showed that 93% of RRC students who responded to our survey said that they had found their course useful in their day-to-day working lives, with 45% rating it five out of five. A further 50% of students received a promotion or changed jobs after completing their studies with RRC.

Workplace Exposure Monitoring: an Overview

Dr. Richard Griffiths, PhD, MSc (Env Man), MEd, Cert Ed, Grad R.S.C, FRSH, FRIPH, CMIOSH, MIIRSM

Throughout the UK, employers and employees come into contact with workplace hazards every day, which is why the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) publish a wide variety of literature and information detailing those hazards and how to monitor them. They publish a series of Guidance Notes on Environmental Hygiene and Medicinal topics, as well as referencing various websites that describe their effects. In addition to environmental hazards, there may be physico-chemical hazards caused by the physical or chemical properties of the substance, or toxicological hazards, which arise from a chemical causing harmful effects to living organisms. Toxic effects may be acute or chronic, local or systemic, and reversible or irreversible.

Why do we Need Workplace Exposure Monitoring?

Some hazards are more common to specific industries such as lead and radiation, or specific occupations such as farm workers and coal miners. Irrespective of this, each hazard can enter the body by a number of routes, such as inhalation, absorption and ingestion, where they target specific organs, for example the lungs and liver, or systems (lymphatic) within the human body. These can give rise to either acute effects: short-term response induced by a single dose or limited exposure to the agent, or chronic effects: long-term response, usually after repeated exposures to a sublethal concentration of the agent on the human body.

From Carpenter to Health and Safety Expert

Justin Montellier, who fast-tracked through an 18-month course in just six months to improve his career prospects, is an example and inspiration to anyone thinking ‘new year, new career’.

Justin Montellier began his career as a carpenter, working on building sites. He decided he needed a career change when a downturn in the industry coincided with him wanting a better paid, more professional and stable occupation after getting married, eleven years ago.

Justin did the NEBOSH National General Certificate to get him started and found a position as Health and Safety Manager for a construction company. He noticed, however, that the health and safety industry, in line with many other sectors, was demanding an increased level of professionalism from its practitioners. He realised that if he wanted his career to progress and significantly improve his prospects, he would need a recognised qualification and membership of a respected industry body. Gaining experience on the job, as he’d done in the past, was no longer going to get him where he wanted to go.

News In Brief

• The town of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, put up its Christmas lights at the beginning of October 2006 but was forced to take some of them down two weeks later for health and safety reasons. They had been placed too low across two streets and could be hit by lorries.

• A teacher at a school in Withington, Manchester, suffered cuts and bruises to her arm when she was attacked by a five-year-old pupil. The child was excluded for 15 days and subsequently expelled. She was said to have assaulted six members of staff on a previous occasion.

• The British Standards Institution is drawing up new rules to cover school trips abroad, following concern from parents about safety and fears among teachers of being sued if anything goes wrong. Existing levels of protection are regarded as patchy.

• The arm of a crane hit the top deck of a double-decker bus as it travelled from Croydon to Purley in South London in late October 2006. Fire-fighters had to cut off the top of the bus in order to free the passengers. One man suffered neck injuries and was taken to hospital. Five other passengers who had dived for cover were also injured, but less seriously.

• A pear tree in the grounds of an Oxfordshire primary school was felled because school governors and the head teacher considered children and parents to be at risk from falling pears. The tree was overhanging the playground and parents were said to have been hit on the head by falling fruit as they waited to collect their children. According to a fruit farmer, the issue could have been resolved by removing damaged pears and picking fruit before it ripened.

• Claims for damages by victims of the Buncefield oil depot explosion and fire in December 2005 will start to be heard in May 2007. 3,300 claimants are seeking a total of nearly £700 million in compensation. The site has yet to be cleared, a government inquiry is continuing, and some people have not yet been able to return to their homes. The oil companies, Total and Texaco, have been criticised for delay in resolving claims.

• Figures released by the Health and Safety Commission show that recycling workers are twice as likely to suffer a serious injury at work as other refuse collectors. There has been a considerable increase in accidents involving recycling workers and at least five died in 2006.

• The Ministry of Defence has paid compensation of £145,000 to a woman suffering from cancer. Her grandfather regularly came home from work covered in asbestos fibres and she is believed to have inhaled these as she sat on his knee 40 years ago. The sum was agreed in an out-of-court settlement.

• A former Tube worker is claiming £300,000 compensation from London Underground for an injury suffered in 2003 when he fell down four steps and twisted his ankle. He retired on medical grounds the following year. The accident occurred at Wanstead station where he claims the steps were poorly lit.

• The Health Protection Agency has reported an increase in the number of health workers contracting blood-borne viruses such as hepatitis C and HIV at work. There were 206 cases in 2002 and 306 cases in 2005, an increase of 49%.

• The owners of Gulliver’s theme park in Warrington, Cheshire, were fined £80,000 at Chester Crown Court in November 2006 for health and safety offences, following the death of a 15-year-old girl with Down’s syndrome in July 2002. The victim fell 30 feet to her death from a Ferris wheel.

• The duck pond in the village of West Itchenor, near Chichester, West Sussex, has become the centre of a health and safety controversy. Insurers want the parish council to put up a fence round it to stop people falling in, but some residents are angry, describing the pond as “more of a muddy puddle than a big open pond”. No-one is thought to have been hurt there.

• In late November 2006, the HSE made available for free download a series of PDF documents forming part of the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) Essentials guidance publications for the service and retail sectors. The publications focus on hairdressing, electrolysis, piercing, tattooing, micro-pigmentation and nail bars. The URL is http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/guidance/srseries.htm

• According to HSE statistics, 452,000 people reported suffering from back pain caused or made worse by work in 2004/05 and about one sixth of those were new cases. About five million working days a year are lost due to back pain and 11% of incapacity benefit claimants say that they have a musculoskeletal disorder.

• A survey published at the end of November 2006 suggests that over 200,000 workers in Britain are suffering from a hangover on any given day. 17% of all workers and 19% of workers in the age group 18 to 25 admitted going to work with a hangover at least once a month. The survey was carried out for the private health insurer, PruHealth, by YouGov.

• The owners of the Atlantis Arena nightclub in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, were fined £90,000 at Norwich Crown Court for “putting profit over safety” and exposing more than 70,000 people to asbestos. They knew of its presence in the dancefloor ceiling in 2004 but kept the club open for another 11 months, exposing patrons to a risk of inhaling the dust and the possibility of later developing chronic health problems. Families attending a pantomime were also put at risk.

• The BSI has introduced BS EN 62305:2006 Protection against lightning. Parts 1-4, which replaces BS 6651:1999, the latter to be withdrawn in August 2008. BS EN 62305 Parts 1-4 are applicable to all buildings, new and existing, and provide the latest guidance for lightning protection. In addition to protecting the integrity of installations and people from lightning strike, there is an emphasis (Part 4) on protecting electrical and electronic systems within structures.

• A doctor died recently following an incident 30 years ago when he accidentally pricked himself with a needle after taking a blood sample from a patient. He contracted hepatitis B and was forced to take early retirement. An inquest in Blackpool in December 2006 found that he died from an industrial disease, the Coroner commenting that it was very rare for death to be traced to an injury 30 years ago.

• A pilot who reported for duty while drunk received a four-month jail sentence at Isleworth Crown Court in December 2006. He was nearly seven times over the alcohol limit for flying and was due to fly passengers from Heathrow to Dubai for the Emirates airline.

• The official report by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch into the deaths of two teenage girls at a level crossing in December 2005 found Network Rail to have made a fatal mistake. They had wrongly declared the crossing at Elsenham, Essex, to be safe following an inspection eight months earlier and had failed to detect several factors that made it one of the most dangerous crossings in the country.

• A man died on 16th December 2006 after falling 30 feet from a roof at Bristol Airport. He had been dismantling a hangar and was working for a private contractor. The Health and Safety Executive has begun an investigation.

• On 18th December 2006, a building site worker was killed on a Bovis construction site on Barton Dock Road in Trafford Park, Greater Manchester. The man was struck by a bucket which fell from a mechanical digger. The incident was being investigated by Greater Manchester Police and the Health and Safety Executive.

• A man survived after being trapped by his chest and legs for nearly an hour in a 1,500 tonne metal press at the Coventry Press Work factory in the Canley area of Coventry. He was treated by paramedics before being released by fire-fighters on 5th January 2007. He was taken to hospital with chest and pelvic injuries. The police and the Health and Safety Executive began an investigation.

• A farm estate worker was taken to hospital in early January 2007 after being attacked by pigs. He was working on the Heggatt Hall estate at Horstead, Norfolk, when he fell and was attacked by a sow in a pen. Other pigs then joined in.

• A former assistant manager of a pet shop in Nottingham is to receive £700,000 in compensation for severe disability caused by a sick parrot. He contracted psittacosis from the bird and has been confined to a wheelchair for six years. His three months’ work at Focus Do It All was not directly involved with the pets but he often walked past the parrot, sometimes when staff in protective clothing were cleaning its cage. The DIY chain admitted liability before a court hearing.

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