On the scale of things, for instance compared with the number of fatalities and major injuries caused by falling from height (the most common cause of work related death and injury), injuries sustained working with dangerous chemicals are not that common in the United Kingdom anymore, making up only 2% of all recorded workplace fatal injuries and 2.2% of all non-fatal injuries. In total, less than three thousand people were injured in the UK during 2011-12 due to accidents involving dangerous chemicals, with fewer than five hundred of the those being unfortunate enough to suffer injuries categorised by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) as ‘major’.

When the capacity of dangerous chemicals to ignite or burn through bodily tissues, locally or systemically poison or irradiate, blow people and objects to smithereens and cause cancer is considered it is seriously good news that such injuries are relatively rare. However, when you consider that the HSE defines major injuries as those such as fractures of major bones and loss of limbs it doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to contemplate what the major injuries of those victims of accidents involving dangerous chemicals must be like, the most common type of which occur due to inhalation of a chemical, closely followed by accidental ingestion and other forms of skin (including eyes) contact.

Even the most hard-nosed business person endlessly reciting their mantra of ‘cost-cost-cost’ is likely to quail, and rightly so, when confronted by the victim of a serious accident involving dangerous chemicals which was caused by a misplaced prioritisation of profit over employee safety. In this day and age there is absolutely no reason why a worker should have to suffer an appalling chemical injury for that reason – or indeed any reason.

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The law requires that health and safety be managed and controlled on construction sites. It’s as simple as that. Employers know their responsibilities in this respect and should be familiar and adept at using the knowledge and guidance at their disposal to achieve a safe working environment.

A construction project is a complex operation and integral to its success is the advanced planning, organising, controlling and monitoring and reviewing of health and safety issues. A failure to address health and safety adequately can, apart from the legal and personal pain and suffering consequences, have a detrimental effect on completing the project on time and on the morale and commitment of the workforce.

The most common accidents on construction sites are:

• Falls from height – due to poorly designed, positioned or built working positions or inadequate access to those positions.

• Accidents involving vehicles (mobile plant) – most usually caused by rutted, uneven, holed ground conditions, poor driver visibility (especially when reversing) and plant operators being killed or injured when their vehicle turns over.

• Falling or moving materials and collapses – caused by vehicles shedding their loads, materials falling off working positions, incorrectly shored excavations collapsing, overloaded or undermined structures falling down and botched demolitions.

• Trips and slips – caused by untidy sites and unaddressed spillages.

• Electrical accidents (shocks and burns) – mainly due to using faulty equipment or workers coming into contact with underground or overhead power lines.

The methods employed to eliminate or control such risks are extensive and detailed but basically boil down to the following:

• Undertaking a preliminary review of site history to determine the threat of hazardous substances such as asbestos, the location of underground and overhead power lines, the geology of the site, the routes of public rights of way and non-construction project related activity on the site and adjacent to it.

• Agreement to the work methods and safety precautions by everyone involved in the project (who will also be given a copy of them).

• A detailed checking to ensure that every employee or sub contracted worker, from the managers through supervisors to site workers are all adequately trained to undertake the jobs required of them.

• Careful planning of the construction site that will be include, if possible, segregation of vehicles and pedestrians and the demarcation of areas for loading/unloading, parking and manoeuvring of vehicles.

• Provision of personal protective equipment and training on how to use it.

• Trips hazards keep away from stairs and walkways.

• Footpaths kept, firm, level and uncluttered.

• Guards on all raised walkways.

• Adequate (preferably natural) lighting.

• Always considering if hazards can be avoided altogether before imposing controls.

• Establishment of the standard ‘hierarchy of control’ for working at height which is, in order of preference:

o Avoid working at height if possible.

o Use equipment to minimise working from height.

o Minimise distances and consequences.

o Adopt collective protective measures.

o Adopt personal protective measures.

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It’s the same old story. Regardless of where you work from the relatively safe environment of a supermarket or office to the harsher settings of construction sites and farms and forests, the same categories of accidents and injuries predominate.

Mining and quarrying are no different, with falls, vehicles, machinery, being hit by moving or falling objects and explosions killing most people and handling, falls, slips and trips, vehicles, machinery and hand tools causing most non-fatal injuries. Where might you have heard or read this litany of pain and suffering before? Why, from a study of health and safety in practically any industry sector you care to name.

The injuries are the same; the results for the individual injured the same and the effects on the businesses they work for the same. What of course are also the same are the means by which such injuries can be avoided. We are of course talking about employers in the mining and quarrying industries complying with all the requirements of the UK’s copious and all-encompassing health and safety legislation and providing a safe workplace and ensuring as far as is reasonably practicable their employees’ health, safety and welfare whilst they are at work.

The risks to be managed in mining and quarrying, such as the unpredictability of the environment, the presence of heavy machinery and the danger from collapses, flooding and exposure to harmful dusts, gases and other particulates, are obviously different from those encountered in other types of workplace, but the process of managing them, based on risk assessment, remains the same. So why, based on the Health and Safety Executive’s workplace injury report data, are these proven tools not apparently doing their job in the mining and quarrying industry?

There is insufficient space in this article for, and the complexities of mining and quarrying preclude, the inclusion of all the risks and controls involved in helping to prevent injuries, but it still appears that the combination of the hazardous nature of the work and its complexity are continuing to frustrate attempts to bring down the injury rates, both fatal and non-fatal, in the mining and quarrying workforce, despite the industry seriously ramping up its engagement with health and safety over recent years.

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The works accident book is recommended by the Health and Safety Executive and various Manufacturing trade bodies’ advice on health and safety as a good place to start when seeking to avoid factory accidents. We are of course presuming that the factory owner/employer is already complying with all the pertinent health and safety legislation applicable to the health, safety and welfare of their employers at work and the safety of the workplace itself.

The contents of the accident book will provide a reliable heads up on any historical and current trends in types of accidents, enabling the employer to identify areas of risk control that need re-visiting. For instance, an upsurge in slipping accidents might point to the fact that shop floor’s none slip surface is wearing out and requires refurbishing or a constant high number of back injuries due to lifting or carrying indicating that the frequency of manual handling training refresher courses needs increasing or more mechanical handling devices need to be integrated into certain processes.

Another source of information that can help to avoid factory accidents comes from the employees themselves. They also have health and safety duties which should be explained to them when they are initially employed. They are:

• To carry out their work in the way they have been trained to do and to follow instructions.

• Report any dangerous situations they encounter.

• Refrain from behaviour or activity that would endanger themselves or others.

Employees also have the right to refuse to undertake work that they perceive to be dangerous and that has insufficient risk controls in place. However it is the employees’ duty to report dangerous situations they encounter that can make the long term difference as to whether a workplace is reactive or proactive in the way it deals with the control of risks. ‘Good’ employers will also empower employees, within the bounds of their competencies, to take a ‘see it, sort it’ attitude to health and safety.

For instance in the case of an artificially lit corridor, where a couple of light bulbs have failed, making a section hazardously dark, the ‘see it, sort it’ empowered employee will take it upon herself, if she can safely do so, to replace the bulbs, rather than report the situation to a central facilities department who might not be able to act on the report quickly enough to prevent another employee tripping over an unseen obstacle in the darkened corridor.

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The coal mining industry in the UK today is but a shadow of its former self having contracted in size to approximately one hundred small to medium sized mines employing no more than six thousand people.  The majority of the coal mining specific, generally prescriptive health and safety legislation, was framed and passed into law over fifty years ago when the industry employed tens of thousands and the technology and working processes were different from those of today. Although it has been supplemented by more recent legislation, it is generally recognised as being in need of re-visiting.

The coal mining industry is also having to cope with an aging workforce and although the remaining workers in the industry are adequately qualified and experienced, the industry is losing far more managers, engineers, surveyors and supervisors due to retirement than it can replace and it is in those categories of employee than the bulk of the health and safety expertise resided.  The Health and Safety Executive acknowledge this loss of health and safety knowledge and awareness at the leadership level in the industry and have linked most fatal and major injuries reported over the last couple of decades to breakdowns of and issues surrounding mines’ safety management systems.  They also express concern about the reduction in scope of mines safety inspections with many concentrating on environmental risks and managing an aging infrastructure at the expense of not adequately addressing work processes related risk.

This situation, on-going, poses substantial problems around maintaining the required levels of health and safety in coal mines and is further exacerbated by the almost complete disappearance of coal mining specific training within the UK’s educational system – a provision which collapsed as a result of the radical reduction in the size of the industry.  This has made recruiting suitably qualified employees at all levels extremely difficult and in turn led to increasing levels of recruitment of foreign, non-English speaking workers – a situation that has its own health and safety implications.

In contrast to coal production, the other forms of mining for metals and minerals and quarrying in the UK present a more dynamic picture when it comes to the workforce, recruitment and training.  However, strangely enough and based proportionally on the number of workers they employ, these other forms of mining and quarrying produce a greater number of fatal and serious injuries than does the atrophying coal mining sector – 3000 reportable injuries, including 24 fatal injuries since the turn of the century.

In 2002 the mining and quarrying sector took top spot, displacing agriculture and construction, as the most dangerous industries to work in.  This might lead to the conclusion that although the mismanagement of risk in the sector is far from systemic, and the rates of fatalities and serious injuries are very slowly reducing there are still far too many pockets of bad practice out there in industries that are by their inherent nature extremely hazardous.

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It is an unfortunate fact that many people don’t realise how impaired their hearing has become due to workplace noise until the impairment is well advanced and becomes noticeable through, for instance, the need to have the TV or radio volume higher or as a difficulty in hearing normal conversations. The severity of the damage to an employee’s hearing usually relates to the level of the noise and duration of the exposure to it. Noise Induced Hearing Loss is often permanent and although further hearing loss can be avoided by removing the effected person from further exposure to harmful noise levels, the damage has been done and the harsh truth is that it was completely avoidable.

The fact that hearing loss is still all too often work related is mainly because on starting a job which features a noisy working environment, most employees quickly normalise the noise factor, treating it as just another aspect of their working environment and not something that needs changing or avoiding. This response might not be challenged by their co-workers or contradicted by the health and safety culture (or lack of it) of their company and it will only be several years down the line that the damage to their hearing will become apparent and question asked, ‘why didn’t my boss warn me about the noise?’.

Had of course that boss carried out their legal duty to provide a safe working environment and ensure the health, safety and welfare of their employees, the hearing of all their workers would have been preserved intact and they wouldn’t have to be taking hit after hit on their Employers Liability Insurance to cover personal injury claims for compensation from angry and hearing impaired employees and ex-employees. Preventing employees from going deaf at work is, of course, not beyond the wit of man and a competently written health and safety strategy and rigorously implemented risk management plan would have prevented the issue arising in the first place. The steps to managing the risks associated with noise-induced hearing loss are straight forward and do not extend much beyond basic common sense. They include:

• Avoiding noisy processes or the use of noisy machines.

• The use of engineering solutions to reduce the noise of machines and tools and processes that can’t be avoided.

• The use of materials to form sound reducing barriers between noisy machines/processes and employees.

• Ensuring that employees’ hearing isn’t being adversely affected by workplace noise by providing hearing tests for them at regular intervals.

• Limiting the amount of time employees are exposed to harmful noise levels.

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