What’s New on the Web...

New FREE NEBOSH Diploma Revision Webinar coming soon

Let’s face it, revision is never pleasant. But there are ways to make the process a little more pain-free. Our FREE recorded webinar lets you in on some of the secrets to developing a successful revision plan for the NEBOSH National Diploma, including advice on:

• Revision techniques

• Choosing what to revise

• Identifying your personal strengths and weaknesses

• Exam techniques

• Tackling exam questions

• Avoiding exam pitfalls

This webinar will be available from 1 March at www.rrc.co.uk

February Podcast now available

Our latest FREE podcast on The Environment is now available at www.rrc.co.uk/Podcasts.aspx

Businesses are often not aware of the real impact of environmental change and the common grounds between the environment and health and safety. This broadcast between David Towlson and a particularly sceptical John Carruthers explores the scientific views of global warming and the four areas of the environment affected: the hydrosphere, the lithosphere, the atmosphere and the biosphere.

News In Brief

• A new government-funded language course for migrant workers will teach them how to report a fire and the vocabulary to understand the contents of a first-aid box. The ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) courses are intended to help people overcome communication problems in basic tasks and integrate quickly into the workforce.

• Contractors clearing a waste tip in East London in October in preparation for the building of the Olympic velodrome unearthed radioactive material in the form of an old speedometer containing a radium-based luminous paint. Nearby factories were known to have used radium paint between the 1930s and 1940s. The Olympic Delivery Authority reported that the level of radiation found at the site was very low and there was no risk to the public.

• A professional re-enactor died in October following an accident during filming of medieval jousting for a Channel 4 television programme. A splinter of wood from a lance went through the slit in his helmet and penetrated his eye. Channel 4 commented that all the appropriate safety precautions had been taken.

• Information obtained by the Western Morning News under the Freedom of Information Act showed that more than 200 radiological incidents involving Royal Navy nuclear-powered submarines have occurred at the Devonport naval base in the past five years.

• Mattel recalled 55,000 toys made in China in October after they were found to be covered in potentially lethal paint. “Impermissible levels” of lead were registered, leading to the fourth recall in six months affecting the company. 12,000 of the toys were recalled from the UK and Ireland.

• Oakley and Deane Parish Council in Hampshire has banned people from feeding the ducks at Oakley village pond on the grounds that it is too dangerous. There are fears that the birds’ droppings contain toxins which could harm children and pollute the pond.

• After a four-year battle, Able UK has been given permission by Hartlepool Borough Council to dismantle and recycle four rusting US ships. Objectors claim that breaking the ships up will release lethal toxins into the environment, although the company maintains that there are no toxins on board. A condition of the permission is that the work is monitored 24 hours a day.

• Negligence by staff at Brixton Prison led to a prisoner falling from an upper bunk bed during an epileptic fit. He was left severely brain-damaged as a result. The incident occurred in 1997 and following a High Court ruling, the Prison Service is liable for damages which were expected to run into several million pounds.

• A 32-tonne underbridge inspection vehicle was left hanging over the edge of a stone bridge in October, when the driver apparently left the engine running while he went for a cup of tea. The vehicle rolled away from where he had left it, smashed through a wall and came to a halt above a grassy incline. The incident occurred in the early hours of the morning while roadworks were being carried out on the bridge, which spans the River Lune, near Caton in Lancashire. Police began an investigation.

• A fractured pipe at a processing plant belonging to Boots in Beeston, Nottinghamshire, leaked chemical and human waste into a nearby brook, causing pollution and killing hundreds of fish. The leak occurred in April 2007 and at the end of October the company was fined £10,000 by Nottingham Magistrates’ Court.

• A director of a small business wrote to The Times following a recent health and safety inspection of his firm. The inspector had told him how his job had changed over the years: “Twenty years ago I would be here to ensure that you were not endangering your employees. Nowadays I am here to help protect you from being sued by them.”

• A firm which turns used cooking oil into diesel admitted three charges of emitting a noxious substance into the River Sirhowy, near Tredegar, South Wales in June 2007. A junior employee, due to a “sad lack of training”, had emptied four barrels of glycerine into a drain, killing fish, frogs and birds. In November, Bio Tech Oils UK Ltd was fined £19,000 and ordered to pay £1,881.66 in costs by magistrates in Abergavenny.

• Villagers in Trowse Common, Norfolk, were unable to obtain insurance cover for a bonfire at their annual firework display for the second year running. Instead, they displayed a film of a bonfire on a giant screen erected on scaffolding.

• The Port of Tilbury London LPD was fined £100,000 with costs of £157,000 in November 2007 following an accident in which a six-year-old boy was killed by a reel of newsprint which fell on him at Tilbury Docks. He had been at the docks with his father, a dock worker, and was riding on a forklift truck which collided with another carrying the reel. The company pleaded guilty to two counts of breaching the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974.

• The Government has been conducting a consultation on plans for how genetically modified crops might live alongside existing and organic crops. DEFRA received over 11,000 responses from the public, farmers and businesses. If genetically modified crops pass a safety assessment by the Government, they could be grown in Britain on a commercial basis from 2009, despite claims by Friends of the Earth that 95% of the responses from the public were against the plans.

• Children’s bead kits made in China and on sale in Britain have been found to contain parts coated with a chemical that metabolises into the sedative GHB when digested. Half a million were recalled in November following the illness of four children in Australia and two in the USA who had swallowed beads.

• Superbug infections of C. difficile affected over 300 patients at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury and at least 33 died as a result. However, despite a highly critical report by the Health and Safety Executive, managers at the hospital will not face charges as there is not enough evidence on which to prosecute them.

• Police announced in November 2007 that two Network Rail workers had been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter in connection with the train crash in Cumbria in February 2007 which killed one person and injured 89 others. Another Network Rail employee had already been arrested and bailed in connection with the crash.

• Authors are claiming that children’s books are suffering intrusive editing on “health and safety” grounds. One author had depicted a dragon toasting marshmallows on flames from his nostrils but this was opposed by editors because “it looked dangerous and went against health and safety”.

• Two ambulance crew members treating a patient in the Grangetown area of Cardiff in November were assaulted by a group of youths. The paramedic suffered facial injuries and a suspected fractured rib in the attack and the technician was treated for shock. The incident took place shortly before midnight when the youths boarded the ambulance and assaulted the crew in the back of their vehicle.

• When a sun lounger blew off a pub’s roof terrace, it struck a man on the back of the neck and the injury triggered a depressive illness leading to paranoia. He subsequently had to abandon his pallet business. The incident occurred outside The Crown in Romford, Essex, in October 2002 and at the High Court in November 2007 he was awarded £1 million in damages.

• A two-year-old girl queuing with her parents at Manchester Airport for a flight to Pakistan toddled through an empty check-in desk and was carried down a four-mile baggage conveyor belt before becoming trapped. A worker investigating a blockage found her in the first of the system’s three tiers and rescued her. The child suffered cuts and bruises in the incident in December 2007 and the airport began an investigation.

• Two women died and the husband of one was seriously injured in an explosion and blaze at his taxi office in Immingham, Lincolnshire, on Christmas Eve. The man was thought to have entered the office with a petrol can, which came into contact with a heater and exploded. The windows and doors of the building were blown out and it was left a blackened shell. Fire-fighters began an investigation into the accident.

• A new dress code for hospital doctors requires their arms to be “bare below the elbows” and they are recommended not to wear wristwatches or jewellery. The aim is to help reduce the spread of infections such as C. difficile and MRSA. Some doctors responded by saying that a watch with a second hand is necessary to take a patient’s pulse accurately and that there is no evidence that wristwatches carry infections.

• A pensioner being looked after in a nursing home was strangled by a safety belt on her wheelchair. She had been left unchecked overnight. An inquest jury identified six “gross failures” in the care given to her at Amberley Court Nursing Home in Edgbaston and found that neglect played a part in her death.

• A survey of 591 doctors by the British Medical Association found that one in three was attacked verbally or physically during 2007. More than half had witnessed violence against staff members but the majority did not report any of the incidents. A frequent cause of violence was frustration with waiting times.

• A seven-year-old boy received life-threatening injuries when he fell from the cab of a tractor being driven by his father. The tractor was towing a trailer of logs and the boy was crushed beneath the wheels. He had been sitting next to his father in the tractor cab when the accident occurred at Dunchideock near Exeter in January.

• An actor working for a production company injured himself when he fell off a chair while wearing a bear suit. He had complained about visibility inside the suit but his concerns were ignored. He took time off to recover from the incident, whereupon Ragdoll Productions terminated his contract and is now facing a claim for unfair dismissal.

• An amateur dramatics group staging a pantomime in Carnon Downs, Cornwall, in January was using two plastic swords and a pop-gun as props. Police required them to keep the items under lock and key when they were not being used on stage and to inform the local constabulary if they planned to move them. A director of the pantomime was told that this was to satisfy health and safety regulations.

• A man died in May 2002 when he was hit by an unsecured steel swing barrier as he drove into an Asda store car park in Cardiff Bay. Asda admitted health and safety offences and was fined £225,000 with costs of £42,000 by Newport Crown Court in January 2008.

• The Employment Rights (Increase of Limits) Order 2007 came into force on 1st February 2008 and raises the maximum compensatory award for unfair dismissal from £60,600 to £63,000.

Exciting New Partnership

RRC are delighted to announce an exciting new partnership with fellow training provider, Safety Solutions. Based in Kent, Safety Solutions offer a variety of NEBOSH and IOSH day release programmes, allowing RRC to offer its customers the full complement of learning methods. Safety Solutions also run a series of complementary health, safety and environmental programmes that may be of interest to RRC students, including:

• Health and Safety related NVQs (at levels 3, 4 and 5)

• CITB Site Safety Management

• The NEBOSH Specialist Diploma in Disaster and Emergency Management

For further information on any of these courses, please contact info@rrc.co.uk.

Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007

The Herald of Free Enterprise sank off Zeebruge in 1987 with the loss of 188 lives. The subsequent manslaughter charges against P&O European Ferries in 1991 collapsed for want of evidence to prove the guilt of any “controlling mind” although the public enquiry concluded: “From top to bottom the body corporate was infected with the disease of sloppiness”. A public thirst for revenge against the directors was left unsatisfied. When Labour came to power in 1997 and proposed the first of many “Kill Bills” in their proposed legislative programme it looked as if the perceived gap in the legal armoury was to be plugged. On 6th April 2008 the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 will come into force.

Noticeboard

Modern Legislation

In this article we shall discuss the similarity in regulatory approach between a number of apparently disparate pieces of modern legislation, and indicate some of the practicalities of being regulated under these provisions. This article deals with:

• IPPC (Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Regulations 2000)
• COMAH (Control of Major Accident Hazard Regulations1999)
• MSER (Manufacture and Storage of Explosives Regulations 2005)

New Examination Centre in Scotland

RRC is delighted to announce a new collaboration with Oil States Klaper Ltd (OSK) (based in Bathgate, near Edinburgh). From March 2008, we will be offering students the opportunity to complete their practical assessments for both the NEBOSH National General Certificate and the NEBOSH Certificate in Fire Safety and Risk Management at the OSK site in Edinburgh, as well as at our other exam venues in London, Coventry and Exeter.