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Sheila Pantry Associates Ltd

Editorial

Editorial Archive

Accidents and Costs

August 2013
Sheila Pantry OBE

Research by the UK Health and Safety Executive suggests that over 1 million injuries and 1.3 million cases of ill health are experienced by workers on a yearly basis, which leads to 27 million working days lost to business. In addition, 25,000 individuals are forced to give up work as a result of ill health or injury suffered at work (excluding cancer). It is estimated that these figures combined and cost society including British employers an estimated £13.4 billion in 2010/11. Clearly this is a vast amount, with many organisations unaware of the real cost of accidents and ill health to the company, the employee and to society as a whole.

The benefits associated with performing a costing assessment, from both a reactive viewpoint for accidents that have occurred and from a proactive or “what if” viewpoint, are widely ignored by organisations. More information is available and this needs to be widely promoted to businesses – not only in the UK but across the world.

Help is available in OSH UPDATE www.oshupdate.com and FIREINF www.fireinf.com that answers your questions – quickly and easily. It is always good to keep researching and finding out if there are services and other ways of keeping up-to-date in this fast changing world of ours. Time is precious and many people are really stretched in their jobs and find it difficult to keep ahead in current knowledge that they need to remain efficient and effective. But help is at hand for those working in health, safety and fire and fire related industries.

By using FIREINF a recent enquiry on firefighters’ health produce a wealth of information – all in this one stop shop of worldwide fire information source FIREINF www.fireinf.com that is the world’s premier collection of validated, authoritative fire and fire related information. It contains 17 databases and 547,000 records and covers two major collections.

FIREINF Full Text Collection databases containing thousands of pages of full text information and The Bibliographic Collection has databases contain records to journal articles, guidance and advice, circulars, reports, conference proceedings, research reports, statistics and codes of practice from worldwide sources, all of which may be easily accessed. One database from the British Standards Institution BSI – contains references to over 4300 fire and fire related standards and another BSI database contains references to security related standards.

This long established collection started in 1997 as Fire Worldwide. Over the years FIREINF has continuously enlarged as new information is published and is used by organisations worldwide.


OSH UPDATE – are you using it? If not, why not? Work smarter and not harder – try OSH UPDATE

More information on health and safety at work – not only from Europe but from around the World, including advice, guidance, research results and legislation and much more can be found by checking out the OSH UPDATE electronic collection of information sources. Information Seekers will find a wealth of authoritative and validated advice from around the world. Best practices, case studies, journal articles, reports and knowledge of systems are in OSH UPDATE.

OSH UPDATE is CONTINUOUSLY expanding and has 20 databases of full text and bibliographic records. It is a unique collection of quality information from major OSH sources, e.g. A recent addition is the MHAID database containing major hazards accidents and incidents reports which complements the many thousands of similar reports within OSH UPDATE collection.

Why not try OSH UPDATE for yourself? Take a 15 day free trial to a collection of over 831,000 sources of authoritative and validated information.

The electronic services OSH UPDATE www.oshupdate.com and FIREINF www.fireinf.com will help you and your organisation to keep up-to-date. These services continue to bring you the latest information on health, safety, environment, fire and other subjects that you will find useful in your daily work.

OSH UPDATE and FIREINF services contain both full text and bibliographic information are continuously enlarged as new information is published. These services are used by individuals, organisations, universities, institutions and companies worldwide.

For a 15 DAY FREE NO OBLIGATION TRIAL contact: Sheila Pantry Associates Ltd | email: sp@sheilapantry.com | or fill in the Interest form www.sheilapantry.com/interest.html


This month’s FOCUS is on Public Health Response to a Changing Climate.

Worldwide, plans have been made already up to 2014 to have training courses, symposiums and conferences in many places in the world on a wide range of subjects. Look at the latest additions to the Diary of Events. Don’t forget to budget for these events – make sure that you and your colleagues are up-to-date with the very latest knowledge – remember that all workplaces and those working in them change, so continue to do your risk assessments.

For example

One way of keeping up to date is to go to exhibitions and the world’s major OSHE events. Remember that even if you cannot attend these many events, speakers and organisers are often willing to share their knowledge. Look at the details – where possible, I add in the web sites of these events so you can request further information. And do let me know if you are organising any OSHE and fire events so that I can add them to the Diary send to sp@sheilapantry.com

OSHWORLD continues to bring you information on health, safety, environment, fire and other subjects that I do hope you find useful in your daily work.

It is always good to review health, safety, chemical, fire and environment procedures on a regular basis. It is also important that the practices and systems in the workplace are constantly reviewed and if necessary, improved. This review may also indicate training requirements and updates and re-thinking how systems and services can be improved. This is where the free-of charge OSHWORLD can help you find the right course, seminar or conference.


Your OSHWorld Portal

Globally there are new publications, news items, new products so remember to look at the News section to find the latest information from an ever increasing number of sources such as the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work to the US National Institute for Occupational safety and Health (NIOSH). Use OSHWORLD as your portal to many hundreds of validated and authoritative web sites which you can find in the Country and Subject links we offer. New subject topics are constantly brought together on web sites, e.g. the various OSH related networks that exist around the world... there may be one where you live and work... why not join it!

Remember to look at the Products and Services on this web site and see what is new and updated.

OSHWORLD www.oshworld.com – your portal to some of the very best OSH web sites in the world!

Also look at our www.shebuyersguide.com that give you access to many organisations, their products and services. You may also wish to add your company’s information to the listing for free!

You can sign up for the RSS feed that alerts you each time there is an update in OSHWORLD!

OSH UPDATE was described recently as a “brilliant site”!


Don’t work harder – work smarter! Be ahead of the game.

Are you hoping to have a zero accident, incident-free and healthy record this year in your workplace? Some would argue that this is not possible! But keep on trying!