Resources on Industrial Process Health Hazards

Regulatory Agencies UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) Irish Health and Safety Authority (HSA) Safe Work Australia USA Occuaptional Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) USA NIOSH – Industries and Occupations International Labour Organisation ILO Encyclopaedia of Occupational Health and Safety Campaigns BOHS – Breathefreely Breathefreely Australia Industry Organisations TWI (Welding) ECFIA (Ceramic fibre) CONCAWE (Petroleum

Resources – Effects of Hazardous Substances

  European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) for information on the classification and labelling requirements for substances on the market in the European Union The US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) have extensive information on hazardous substances including: Pocket Guide Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health (IDLH) Values GESTIS – A series of  very

Welding–The Risks

Welding is one of the most common activities carried out in industry. HSE estimate that there are around 190,000 welders in UK. However, this is likely to be an underestimate of the total number of workers who carry out welding as there is likely to be a large number who do a small amount of

Health in Construction

A couple of weeks ago I travelled down to Birmngham to give a talk on behalf of the BOHS Breathe Freely initiative at the Health and Wellbeing event at the NEC. The Title of the talk was Managing Health in Construction – What Good Looks Like. An annotated version of the slides I used during

Canary Girls

A couple of weeks ago I visited the latest exhibition showing at Manchester City Art Gallery – The Sensory War 1914-2014 This major group exhibition marking the Centenary of the First World War explores how artists have communicated the impact of military conflict on the body, mind, environment and human senses between 1914 and 2014.

Baker’s asthma

I recently attended the Lane lecture, an annual event hosted by Manchester University’s Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH), held in honour of Ronald Lane, the first Professor of Occupational Medicine at the University. This year’s lecturer was Professor Paul Cullinan, Professor in Occupational and Environmental Respiratory Disease, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial

Information on hazardous substances–some useful websites

There is a lot of information on hazardous substances the Internet, but not all of it is properly validated. Finding the information you need just by carrying out a search using a search engine can be frustrating as it can be difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. However, there are a number of

Organic compounds – Health hazards

We’re running the BOHS Module W507, Health effects of hazardous substances, in Chester next week. It’s essentially an introduction to the principles of toxicology together with an overview of the effects of some substances encountered in the workplace. One group of substances commonly found are volatlile organic compounds (VOCs). They’re used for cleaning applications and

Low Toxicity Dusts–Part 2

In my last post I discussed the evidence that suggests that the “trigger values” of 10 and 4 mg/m3 that are widely used as such by many occupational hygienists for “low toxicity dusts” where an official Workplace Exposure Limit (WEL) hasn’t been set, are probably too high to prevent ill health in workers. Despite considering

Low Toxicity Dusts – Part 1

(Image source: BOHS) Regulation 2 of COSHH1 states that any dust when present in the workplace at a concentration in air equal to or greater than 10 mg/m3 of inhalable dust or 4 mg/m3 of respirable (as a time-weighted average over an 8-hour period) is considered to be a substance hazardous to health. If the