Editorial
The Culture of Prevention – Future Approaches
October 2013
Sheila Pantry OBE
The culture of prevention is all about spreading the good word about occupational safety and health (OSH) into everyday life. For too long OSH has been ridiculed and blamed unnecessarily for so many things. The many examples quoted in the UK Health and Safety Executive’s Mythbusters website www.hse.gov.uk/myth will amplify this statement!
Perhaps lessons learned from other countries who have embraced a wider view should be investigated. Should OSH stop at the door of the workplace or should it be taken home and implemented into all aspects of everyday life? So it is interesting to see the various papers that were presented on 25-27 September 2013 at the Helsinki Congress Paasitorni, Finland at the International Symposium on Culture of Prevention - Future Approaches. The Symposium was composed of five keynote lectures, oral presentations, poster presentations and a Learning Café. There were six sessions in addition to the Opening and Closing plenary sessions. To read about future approaches that are being put forward see the abstracts of the papers presented at the conference www.ttl.fi/en/international/conferences/culture_of_prevention/pages/default.aspx
Are you keeping up-to-date?
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.
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 www.oshupdate.com is CONTINUOUSLY expanding and has 20 databases containing 834,000 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. Also why not try the electronic services FIREINF www.fireinf.com that contains 17 databases with over 548,000 sources of full text and bibliographic authoritative and validated information. Both these services 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 the new British Standard BS ISO/IEC 27001:2013 Information technology, Security techniques, Information security management systems, Requirements, October 2013.
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.
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!