News from around the World

News Archive

May 2009

First Europe-wide healthy and safe workplaces photo competition launched on Europe Day

A new photography competition focussing on health and safety at work has been announced by the European Agency for Safety and Health (EU-OSHA). All photographers - professional or amateur - are invited to join the competition and submit their photographs before 15 August 2009. An international jury of professional photographers will select the best entries from a special competition website. Prizes totalling Euros 7,000 await the winners.

The competition - entitled What's your image of safety and health at work? - is open to all EU citizens. The photography competition forms part of EU-OSHA's Healthy Workplaces campaign and has its own dedicated website at www.osha-photocompetition.eu

With this initiative, EU-OSHA encourages entrants to photograph images which portray health and safety at work issues in creative and imaginative ways. Participants can interpret health and safety at work in any way they choose: there are no restrictions on subject matter or theme. Entries could depict work-related situations in different economic sectors such as agriculture, education or health care. The problems of a certain group like migrants or women could also be highlighted.

Jukka Takala, Director at EU-OSHA, commented on the launch of the competition: "Europe's workplaces have changed a lot over the past few years. But even if we have experienced increasing awareness of occupational safety and health in the EU, along with greater efforts in making working conditions more fulfilling, we still have a lot to do. With this photo initiative, we want to see what safety and health at work means to Europeans today and how they perceive it in their lives and we want to spread our message in an innovative and interactive way to more people."

Selection process and prizes

A diverse and experienced jury composed of several leading figures in European photography has been assembled. Top photographers Mertxe Alarcón, Clemente Bernad, Miguel Angel Gaüeca and Ambroise Tézenas are joined by Peter Rimmer, communication expert in occupational safety and health and formerly from the Health and Safety Executive in the UK.

Jury member Ambroise Tézenas, winner of the Leica European Publishers Award for Photography, says: "It's a great photographic challenge and I am curious how people handle this topic. We look for creativity and technical quality as well as the photographer's ability to portray the competition theme. We especially value photographs that draw attention to the positive aspects of safe and healthy workplaces".

In total, four winners are selected from the submissions. The first prize is awarded with €3,000. Second and third placed entries win €2,000 and €1,000 respectively. The public's favourite is established through online voting on the competition website and wins €1,000.

A touring exhibition showcases winning and short-listed photos throughout Europe. For more information on how to enter the "What's your image of safety and health at work?" competition, please visit www.osha-photocompetition.eu

Healthy Workplaces. Good for you. Good for business. A European campaign on risk assessment is the Europe-wide information campaign organised by EU-OSHA. The current campaign (2008/2009) aims at reducing work-related accidents and illness through better risk assessment. It targets, in particular, SMEs and high risk sectors, such as construction, agriculture and transport. https://osha.europa.eu/en/healthy-workplaces-campaigns/previous-healthy-workplaces-campaigns

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1st International Congress on Maritime, Tropical and Hyperbaric Medicine, Gdynia, Poland 4-6 June 2009

The 1st International Congress on Maritime, Tropical and Hyperbaric Medicine will be held in Gdynia 4-6 June 2009. It will be an element of celebration of the 70th anniversary of existence and activities of the Inter-Faculty Institute of Maritime and Tropical Medicine of Gdynia, Poland.

The Congress facing the challenges of modern world medicine is the meeting forum of prominent specialists in the various fields from the outstanding foreign and Polish centres. This meeting will be of great value to doctors (in the course of specializing) and to medical students. Welcome are also all professionals interested in health protection, safety of work at sea, tropical diseases, work management in tough conditions, environmental influences on human health and health insurance. Also psychologists, biologists, practitioners and scientists involved in the protection of maritime industry workers and persons who travel or work in the tropical areas are invited to take part in the Congress.

The Congress is organized by The Polish Society of Maritime and Tropical Medicine, Authorities of the Interfaculty Institute of Maritime and Tropical Medicine, Medical University of Gdańsk, and National Centres of Tropical, Maritime and Hyperbaric (DAN-Europe-Polska) Medicine. It is supported by International Maritime Health Association, Antwerp, Belgium. The President of the Congress is Prof. Bogdan Jaremin MD, PhD.

The vast and diversified programme includes lectures devoted to many subjects connected with tropical, maritime and hyperbaric medicine. Presentations will be held by the specialists from all over the world.

NIOSH Science Blog on Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

The US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is working closely with its partners to stimulate, design, conduct, and report pioneering research in this area.

Multi-walled carbon nanotubes, known as MWCNTs for short, are a type of engineered nanomaterial that shows promise for various applications. These include the potential for creating stronger, more durable building materials; improving cancer therapies; creating more efficient means of energy generation, storage, and transmission; and speeding computer processes. However, as with other types of engineered nanomaterials, the potential occupational health implications of MWNCTs are not well understood at this emergent stage of the technology.

A broad group of health and safety practitioners and business observers have agreed that research is vital for determining if MWCNTs pose a health risk for workers engaged in their production and industrial use, and for informing the responsible development of this technology. There is general agreement that this issue must be approached in a proactive manner with good research in order for society to benefit from the many promises this new class of materials has to offer.

One critical avenue of research explores the toxicological aspects of MWCNTs. Some of the critical questions that need to be addressed are these:

• Once these materials enter the body, how do they interact with the body's biological systems?
• What effects may occur in the genes, cells, or tissues as a result?
• Do those effects pose a health risk, either in themselves, or as early warnings of subsequent effects?

To learn more go to http://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2009/03/nano-2

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2008 - 2009 Healthy workplaces: a European Campaign on Risk Assessment

The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) has developed a European-wide information campaign focusing on risk assessment. Healthy Workplaces is a two-year European campaign which aims to promote an integrated management approach to risk assessment.

The Agency is focusing on communicating the principles or risk assessment, its importance for effective prevention, and that risk assessment is mandatory, necessary and feasible.

Risk assessment can be a challenge, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, but it need not be.

To find out more information on risk assessment see https://osha.europa.eu/en/tools-and-publications/oira

More details of Healthy Workplaces: a European campaign on risk assessment at https://osha.europa.eu/en/healthy-workplaces-campaigns/previous-healthy-workplaces-campaigns

U.S. Strategic Management Highlighted in 'Governance' Article

In a new journal article, former NIOSH Director John Howard, M.D., discusses NIOSH's strategic management initiatives over the past decade.

The initiatives, Howard writes, are a case study in "managing for performance" by public health science agencies in an era of increasing complexity of challenges and dwindling resources.

The article, "Informing Public Health Policy and Practice: The Strategic Management of Research Processes and Organizations," was published in the April 2009 issue of Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions (Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 203-216).

An abstract is posted online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0491.2009.01432.x/abstract

Societal Risk: new report from the Health and Safety Laboratory and the Health and Safety Executive

In 2007, The UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE), on behalf of the Cross-government Task Group on Societal Risk, published a consultation document (CD212) that sought views on whether information on potential major accidents, known as 'societal risk' should be taken into account more explicitly when assessing safety measures at onshore, non-nuclear major hazards and for informing decisions on the use of land around such a site.

Following analysis and publication of responses, ministers agreed that 'societal risk' should be taken into account. The detail of how this should be done remains and HSE is leading a program of work to rationalise the policy and technical positions needed for implementation.

This report captures some of the technical matters relating to societal risk methodology and presents the technical issues which need to be resolved prior to the development and implementation of any system for explicit attention to societal risk in the application of the Control of Major Accident Hazards Regulations (COMAH) and land-use planning (LUP).

The Societal Risk Technical Advisory Group is made up of a small number of academic, industry and government specialists who have been asked to advise the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and departments on matters identified by respondents to the consultation exercise CD212 (Proposals for revised policies to address societal risk around onshore non-nuclear major hazard installations') on the estimation of societal risk from on-shore, non-nuclear, major hazard installations.

www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrhtm/rr703.htm

Gender Equality at the Heart of Decent Work Campaign

The year 2009 is significant in many ways for the International Labour Organization (ILO). It is the 90th anniversary of the founding of the ILO, the 50th Anniversary of the ILO CIS Centres for Health and Safety Information Network, the 10th anniversary of its gender equality action plan and the year the International Labour Conference (ILC) will hold a general discussion on "Gender Equality at the Heart of Decent Work".

In the lead-up to this discussion, the ILO launched a global campaign on gender equality and the world of work.

Objectives of the campaign

• increase general awareness and understanding of gender equality issues in the world of work;
• highlight the specific linkages between gender equality and securing decent work for all women and men;
• promote the ratification and application of key ILO gender equality labour standards; and
• advocate the importance of overcoming existing barriers to gender equality as beneficial for all.

Twelve themes

The campaign is built around twelve Decent Work themes. These themes will be looked at through a gender lens, showing how various issues may affect women and men differently in their access to rights, employment, social protection and social dialogue. It is a one-year campaign, that started in June 2008 and ends in June 2009

Campaign materials and events

For each of the campaign themes, an information brief has been made available, accompanied by a poster and a postcard.

For more information see www.ilo.org/gender/Events/Campaign2008-2009/lang--en

Call for Nominations EFCE Excellence Award in Process Safety 2010

The European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE) is pleased to announce the triennial Excellence Award in Process Safety in recognition of a PhD thesis or paper(s) published in the preceding three-year period, which demonstrate an outstanding contribution to research and/or practice in process safety.

The award consists of a certificate, a cash prize of 1500 Euros, a travel grant of up to 500 Euros and fee waiver to attend the International Symposium on Loss Prevention and Safety Promotion where the award will be presented.

The first EFCE Excellence Award in Process Safety will be presented during a plenary session of the 13th International Symposium on Loss Prevention and Safety Promotion (Loss Prevention 2010) to be held from 6 to 9 June 2010 in Brugge, Belgium. The winner will be invited to make a presentation during the Symposium.

Nominations may be submitted by any PhD supervisor at a PhD-awarding institution in an EFCE member country or by a member of a national or regional member association of EFCE. The nominated PhD thesis or paper(s) must address a topic relevant to the field of Process Safety. The thesis must have been completed and published and the PhD degree conferred between 1 January 2007 and 31 December 2008.

Closing date for nominations: 31 October 2009.

Further information about the nomination procedure, selection of candidates, eligibility, supporting documentation, etc., can be obtained from the EFCE website www.efce.info/ExcellenceAwardProcessSafety.html

19th International Congress of Chemical and Process Engineering CHISA 2010 and the 7th European Congress of Chemical Engineering ECCE-7

Will be held jointly in Prague from August 29 to September 2, 2010. The Congress will cover a wide range of important topics and will offer many interdisciplinary links.

The Congress programme will include the satellite PRES 2010 Conference as well as the standard sessions and specialized symposia.

Jiří Drahoš
Congress Chairman
President of the EFCE

Full details in www.chisa.cz/2010