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March/April 2023 issue

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Regulation/enforcement
News

EU proposals would slash UK hardwood dust limit

Open-access content Monday 16th May 2016
From the archive:  Just so you know, this article is more than 3 years old.

Tired extraction system left workers exposed to hardwood dust

The reduction is part of the Commission's proposal to amend the Carcinogens and Mutagens Directive (2004/37/EC) to limit the exposure to 13 cancer-causing chemicals and substances in the workplace by including new or amended limit values. These limit values set a maximum concentration for airborne carcinogens.

If the proposals be are carried through, the EU's current OEL for hardwood dust will drop from 5mg/m3 to 3mg/m3 and the UK, along with 17 other countries including Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania, will have to lower its limits by 2mg/m3.

OELs for hardwood dust in some member states are already well below the proposed (and current) limits and therefore will not be affected. In Denmark and France, exposure to this carcinogen is limited to 1mg/m3, while in the Czech Republic, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden it is 2mg/m3.

The commission estimates hardwood dust exposure is a hazard for more than 350,000 workers in the UK and around 3.3 million EU workers overall in construction, forestry and furniture making. Exposure can cause sinonasal cancer, asthma and dermatitis.

The commission also proposes a 0.1mg/m3 limit on respirable crystalline silica (RCS). Affecting approximately 5.3 million EU workers, around 500,000 of which are in the UK, RCS is present in construction, mining, gas and electricity industries and causes lung cancer and silicosis.

The UK would not be affected by the proposed limit for RCS as its current national limit is already 0.1mg/m3; most affected would be Cyprus, Greece and Poland, whose OELs presently stand at 1mg/m3.

Kate Field, head of information and intelligence at IOSH, said: "Setting occupational exposure limits across Europe can help to prevent cancers and premature deaths and achieve consistent standards. However the best way of protecting people is to prevent exposure in the first place. Relying on measures such as respiratory protective equipment alone is not acceptable; we support a greater shift towards designing out the risk to avoid exposure."

"As well as benefits for workers and their families, cutting exposures to cancer-causing agents has many other economic and societal benefits. These include reductions in healthcare, rehabilitation and early retirement costs, lost earnings, lost productivity, losing workers and the need for compensation."

The commission's proposed limit values for 13 chemical agents is based on input from scientists, employers, workers, member states' representatives and safety and health regulators.

Cancer is the largest cause of work-related fatalities in the EU, accounting for 53% of deaths, or 102,000 a year.

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 EU bodies draw up roadmap to raise carcinogen awareness

Tuesday 31st May 2016
The covenant was signed in Amsterdam, the Netherlands on 25 May 2016 and is valid until 31 December 2019. The signatories are: the European Agency for Safety and Health and Work (EU-OSHA); the European Commission; the European Trade Union Confederation, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection; BusinessEurope; and the Netherlands Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment. The scheme started with the Netherlands’ presidency of the EU Council, which was held from 1 January to 30 June 2016.
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 Manslaughter term for landlord who covered up employee’s scaffold fall

Tuesday 10th May 2016
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 Unite secure £4m for remaining blacklisted workers

Monday 9th May 2016
Legal action was taken against 30 construction contractors who had funded a secret database to blacklist workers. The database, collated by the Consulting Association (TCA), contained details of workers’ trade union activities and past employment conduct, including those who had raised health and safety issues.Last week the UCATT and GMB unions and solicitors GCR announced that they had reached an out of court settlement for their affected members.
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 Trade Union Bill receives Royal Assent with govt concessions on facility time

Thursday 5th May 2016
The Bill, now the Trade Union Act, includes government concessions on ministers’ power to limit public sector trade unions representatives’ time off for duties including safety and health monitoring.The House of Lords had previously passed an amendment to delete Clause 13 of the Bill and thus remove ministers’ power to impose a cap on union reps’ facilities time.
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 Blacklisted workers accept compensation from firms

Tuesday 3rd May 2016
Legal action was launched when it was revealed that the contractors including Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Costain, Kier, Laing O’Rourke, Sir Robert McAlpine, Skanska UK and Vinci had funded a secret system to blacklist workers. The database contained details of workers’ trade union activities and past employment conduct; some were cited for voicing concerns about health and safety while on sites.
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 Hillsborough inquest jury finds 96 victims were unlawfully killed

Tuesday 26th April 2016
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  Morrisons’ £3.5m fine is ‘a warning to all employers’, says council

Friday 24th March 2023
Morrisons supermarket has been fined £3.5 million for failing to ensure the health and safety of an epileptic employee who died after falling from a shop stairway.
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 IOSH launches new five-year strategy

Tuesday 21st March 2023
IOSH launches its new five-year strategy this spring. It will build and act on the reshaped purpose and ambition gained during WORK 2022, which ran from 2017 to 2022.
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 Risk & Compliance software provider collaborates with HSE and Costain to improve risk management on worksites

Friday 17th March 2023
A Belfast-based Risk & Compliance software provider has been collaborating with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and construction giant Costain as part of an ongoing project to unlock artificial intelligence’s (AI) potential in improving the management of risks on worksites.
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 In stats: A global view of cancer

Wednesday 31st August 2022
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 SCUBA supplier fined £9.3k in schoolboy coma case

Friday 6th August 2021
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 WorkSafe New Zealand launches Life Shavers campaign

Thursday 3rd June 2021
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 A reasonable balance to strike

Friday 24th March 2023
Safety interventions should be practicable and cost-effective, but too much of an imbalance towards safety does not make economic sense for employers, argues Geoff Vaughan, who suggests ‘gross disproportion’ provides a practical limit.
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 Spring budget and occupational health

Friday 17th March 2023
Richard Jones CFIOSH, comments on the occupational health aspects of the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt's first budget statement.
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 Health and safety regulations at risk under draft law

Monday 13th March 2023
A proposed new law aims to revoke EU-derived legislation, including life-saving protections, by December 2023, unless specifically kept or replaced – Richard Jones CFIOSH explains how OSH practitioners can get involved.
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