Editorial
Time to prepare for World Day for Safety and Health, 28 April 2009
Sheila Pantry OBE
March 2009
World Day for Safety and Health at Work is now an annual worldwide event held on 28th April.
It offers organisations, unions and others worldwide the opportunity to raise awareness about raising standards of safety and health in workplaces. It also gives time to remember those who have died in workplaces or have sustained lifelong injuries and ill-health.
It is an integral part of the International Labour Office SafeWork's Global Strategy, as documented in the Conclusions of the International Labour Conference in June 2003. Advocacy, as exemplified by World Day, is one of the main pillars of the Global Strategy, and should raise awareness about safe and unsafe workplace practices and the need to move occupational safety and health up the political agenda. On this day the ICFTU and many countries observes Worker Memorial Day and often the two can be combined.
Last year, events were held in many countries worldwide. They ranged for example, from speeches held by leaders from government, employers' organizations and trade unions to seminars, workshops and worker coffee meetings all focusing on occupational safety and health.
As you to begin preparing activities in your organisation, region or country think of new ways that you can communicate the health and safety message. Your activities will carry the Day and contribute to its success. So it is time to prepare for your commitment to what has become a major annual event.
Everyone from Directors, Managers, Supervisors and Workers should be involved in creating a safe and healthy culture in your workplace. The definition of a safety and health culture is one in which the right to a safe and healthy working environment is respected at all levels. It is one where governments, employers and workers actively participate in securing a safe and healthy working environment through a system of defined rights, responsibilities and duties, and where the principle of prevention is accorded the highest priority.
Building and maintaining a preventative safety and health culture requires making use of all available means to increase general awareness, knowledge and understanding of the concepts of hazards and risks and how they may be prevented or controlled.
Do not let the current economic climate interfere in ensuring that good health and safety in the workplaces are maintained. The message is "Don't let health and safety slip of the agenda"!
This month's FOCUS article looks at two new reports from the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work. The reports look at Occupational skin diseases and dermal exposure and Workplace exposure to vibration in Europe. These reports warn about two major dangers in the workplace.
OSHWORLD continues to bring you information on health, safety, environment, fire and other subjects that I hope you find useful in your daily work.
Worldwide, plans have been made already up to 2010 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.
See for example: 13 May 2009 - Mind the Gap: Keeping up-to-date in fire information 2009: Fire Information Group UK (FIGUK) Conference. Essential one-day conference for all those involved in Information in fire and fire related topics. Benefit from the expertise of specialist speakers. It will be held at the Imperial Hotel, Russell Square, and London, UK.
Your OSHWorld Portal
Globally new titles, news items, new products are being produced so remember to look at the News to find the latest information from a number of sources. Use OSHWORLD as your portal to many hundreds of validated and authoritative web sites that you can find in the Country and Subject links we offer. New subject topics are constantly brought together on web sites, e.g. drugs and alcohol abuse in the workplace.
Most information services have a reference shelf where you can quickly check the reference sources - so OSHWORLD brings you a collection of Reference sources.
Click onto the various Bookshops to order any new document as they are being published. Bookshops have a constant stream of new titles available.
Please send any suggestions or comments about OSHWORLD - your portal to validated and authoritative information.
Keeping up-to-date despite the turbulent times...
This last month the dreadful bushfires in Australia remind us that we must be aware of dangers at all times. So do you want to keep up-to-date in worldwide occupational health, safety, hygiene, road safety, water safety, environment trends and fire latest information? Do budget constraints not allow you to buy all the journals, newsletters and documents that contain the latest information? Can't afford the time to search for the latest information, legislation and standards? No staff to search for this information? And no time yourself to spend hours searching for information?
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 should have for their jobs. But help is at hand for those working in health, safety and fire and fire related industries.
FIREINF www.fireinf.com is the world's premier collection of validated, authoritative fire and fire related information. It contains 16 databases and over 523,000 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 and over the years has been rapidly expanding. From 2007 the collection continued to expand with the new software and host platform as FIREINF and aims to help all those seeking information on all aspects of fire, emergency and preparedness management principles, fire risk assessment, good practices and research.
FIREINF is continuously enlarged as new information is published and is used by organisations 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
OSH UPDATE - are you using it? If not, why not? If you are missing OSH-ROM - then try OSH UPDATE
More information on health and safety at work - not only from Europe but around the World, including advice and guidance, legislation and much more can be found by checking out the OSH UPDATE electronic collection of information sources. 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 19 databases.
As two information experts have said today - "wonderful, easy to use database collections of full text documents and bibliographic records that are unique and are constantly evolving."
Why not try OSH UPDATE for yourself? Take a 15 day free NO OBLIGATION trial to a collection of over 800,000 sources of authoritative and validated information.
Contact: Sheila Pantry Associates Ltd | email: sp@sheilapantry.com | or fill in the Interest form www.sheilapantry.com/interest.html
Don't work harder - work smarter! Be ahead of the game.
Well did you have a zero accident, incident-free and healthy year in 2008 in your workplace? Some would argue that this is not possible! But keep on trying again in 2009!
And do start to make plans for your campaigns for 2009!