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.

NEW NEBOSH International Diploma in Bahrain

RRC, in partnership with RRC Middle East, have been asked by NEBOSH to run a pilot of the new NEBOSH International Diploma in Occupational Safety and Health.

The NEBOSH International Diploma is modelled on NEBOSH's National Diploma. The key difference between the two awards is in the applicability of legal requirements. Rather than be guided by a specifically UK framework, the International Diploma takes a risk management approach based on Best Practice and International Standards, such as ILO Codes of Practice, with special reference to models such as the ILO's Guidelines on Occupational Safety and Health Management Systems (ILO-OSH 2001).

RRC will be offering the pilot in Bahrain only. Our block-release course is run over ten months and requires 7 weeks attendance, the first week commencing on 17th February 2007. Distance and e-learning courses for the International Diploma are planned for 2008.

For more information on this pilot course, click here for details or contact one of our Customer Advisers on +44 (0)20 8944 3108.

Course Dates for RRC Middle East

We are pleased to announce new course dates for RRC Middle East. All dates given are for Block Release programmes.

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:

Partnership with the International Academy for Security Management

RRC have just agreed a partnership with ARC Training to offer RRC’s customers courses from the International Academy for Security Management.

ARC Training are world leaders in security management training and their International Academy for Security Management specialises in preparing security professionals from all over the world to protect the challenging and rapidly changing business environments of the new century. They work closely with organisations like Skills for Security, Middlesex University, the Security Institute and ASIS International, and draw on the very best in international security management best practice and standards.

Details will be on our website in the next few weeks.

Yet Another Success for Our International Students

RRC Training are proud of the success achieved by all of our international students and we have no doubt that this success will be shared by a recent cohort of students from Shell Nigeria, who visited London in December 2006 to attend one of our of NEBOSH International General Certificate block-release programmes.

Fifteen students from Shell Nigeria attended the course and were delighted with the standard of the programme, which was run by one of RRC’s most experienced tutors, Dr Jim Phelpstead.

Shell Nigeria are now keen to move to the next stage and have asked RRC Training to design a ‘tailor-made’ NEBOSH Diploma programme, incorporating our standard distance learning programme supported by a series of online and face-to-face training delivered over a nine-month period.

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

• Six people died and 16 others were injured in a train crash at Zoufften in France, near the border with Luxembourg, in early October 2006. The rail authorities in both countries blamed the accident on human error at the rail traffic control centre in Bettembourg, Luxembourg.

• A report by the US Chemical Safety Board into the fire at the BP Texas City refinery in July 2005, which injured one worker and caused $30 million of property damage, found the cause to be a wrong piece of piping. A pipe made of carbon steel rather than low-alloy steel had been installed at a critical part of a hydrogen-treating unit. It ruptured after only three months, releasing highly flammable hydrogen gas into the atmosphere.

• In the second labour camp fire to have been reported in Dubai in the last four months, two large portacabins were destroyed at the Arabtec labour camp near the Arabian Ranches development in October 2006, where over 2,000 construction workers are accommodated. No site workers were injured as the buildings were empty at the time. The fire is believed to have originated from an electrical short circuit and property damage affected around 100 people.

• Two underground trains collided in Rome during the morning rush hour in mid-October 2006, killing one person and injuring 236 others, five of them critically. The crash is thought to have been caused by one train missing a red signal and hitting the rear of the other train at high speed. The authorities have ordered a review of safety procedures.

• A contract worker died from head injuries on 23rd October 2006 after being struck by a high-pressure pipe at the Cameco Corporation McArthur River uranium mine site, located 600 km north of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The man was struck on the head while working with three others de-icing pipes with compressed air when the accident occurred. The cause of the accident is unknown and an investigation was initiated.

• A highway maintenance worker died in Germany in late October 2006 when the milling machine he was operating set off an explosive device, thought to be a World War 2 bomb. The man was cutting concrete from the A3 autobahn near Aschaffenburg in Bavaria. The explosion also caused damage to seven vehicles and five people were treated for shock.

• A half-mile section of the Yellow River in China turned bright red in late October 2006 when a heating company flushed 1,500 litres of dyed water into it to facilitate boiler repairs. The boiler water had been dyed to prevent people diverting it for their own use. Environmental protection officials were trying to establish whether the discharge was toxic and the company was warned by the authorities that it would be fined.

• On 27th October 2006, at least eight people died when an oxygen welding cylinder exploded and caused a building to collapse at an oxygen filling station in the Isani-Samgori district of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. Surrounding buildings were also subjected to blast damage. It was suggested by local officials that poor safety standards at the filling station were to blame, and safety regulations were not being followed.

• On 1st November 2006, one worker died and six were injured when a pipe fractured and released ammonia in a nitrogenous fertiliser factory in the central Chinese Hubei Province. Around 20,000 residents were evacuated from the neighbourhood of the factory in Dawu County. The plant belongs to the Huangmailing Phosphorus Chemical Industry Group Company, whose employees eventually managed to stop the leak by closing a pipe valve.

• In early November 2006, a refrigeration line broke in the plant of Tyson Foods Inc. in South Hutchinson, Kansas, USA, releasing toxic ammonia gas which caused the death of one worker and serious injury to another. Tyson Foods Inc. is a food processing company specialising in poultry, beef and pork food services. The US Chemical Safety Board announced that an investigation would be made into the cause of the incident.

• Four Hungarian construction workers were killed and two others seriously injured on 11th November 2006 on the site of a new Seissenschmidt automotive products factory in Gyongyos, 72 kilometres north-east of Budapest. A work gang of 12 were engaged on casting a concrete floor when several hundred square metres of roof collapsed on them. No other details were released at the time.

• Almost three months after Israel’s bombardment of a Lebanese power station during hostilities against Hezbollah, volunteers were continuing to clean beaches contaminated with oil. Three quarters of Lebanon’s 200-km coastline was fouled when more than 15,000 tonnes of fuel spilled into the Mediterranean.

• On 22nd November 2006, fire rescue teams recovered five bodies from the site of a warehouse fire in Amghara, Kuwait, leaving one worker unaccounted for. Construction work at the site had almost been completed. The cause of the fire was not reported at the time.

• On 26th November 2006, two maintenance engineers became trapped by machinery and were crushed to death while working to resolve a mechanical fault at the Best Way Cement plant in Tatrla Kahoon, Pakistan. The machinery had not been isolated and locked-out, and the accident took place when the machinery restarted.

• BP was reported in late November 2006 to be facing fines of around $384,000 for safety violations at its Whiting refinery in Indiana. Health and safety inspectors found eight “serious” safety failings there, including inadequate safety documents for workers and failing to test fire hydrants.

• Fire swept through a chemical storage facility in Costa Rica in mid-December 2006, killing three people and seriously injuring more than a dozen. The accident occurred at Quimicos Holanda near Moin, 130 km east of San José when paint thinner leaked from a truck, caught fire and set off explosions. About 500 homes had to be evacuated as fire-fighters fought to control the blaze.

• Statistics from the Press Emblem Campaign in Geneva show that 94 journalists were killed while working in 2006. The figure is the highest ever and Iraq remains the most dangerous place for journalists to work for the third consecutive year.

• A British woman died in Rome in 2003 when she became entangled in the gears of a moving walkway at a railway station. In December 2006, two directors of the OCS maintenance company were found guilty of manslaughter and given suspended jail sentences of 22 and 18 months respectively.

• At the end of December 2006, the energy company, Lapindo Brantas, was asked by the President of Indonesia to pay £140 million in compensation to victims of the mud torrent caused by a drilling accident near the city of Surabaya in May. 10,000 people were made homeless when their villages were inundated.

• Nineteen people died and 12 were injured in late December 2006 when a bus collided with a freight train in the city of Cuautitlán, north of Mexico City, and was dragged along the tracks. The bus driver was thought to have tried to get across the tracks in a bid to beat the train.

• On 3rd January 2007, an employee of the Radzewicz Exploration and Drilling Corporation of Mississippi, USA, died on an oilfield site near Natchez in the south-western part of the state when overpressure blew a cap off a pipeline and inflicted fatal blunt force trauma injuries to the worker’s chest.

• Authorities in Brazil have closed down a bauxite mine after a dam burst, releasing two million cubic metres of mud into a river which supplies water to cities. The incident occurred at the Rio Pomba mine in Miraí city in the south-east of the country. The company is to be fined US$25 million and will not be permitted to rebuild the dam. It was not yet known whether toxic substances were involved.

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