Construction Industry Briefing: Issue 6 (August 07)
The following topics are covered in this issue: health statistics, asbestos, legislation, risk assessmentsand ergonomics.
The HSE web site has been updated with a link to the report ‘Fatal statistics released by Health and Safety Executive (HSE) for 2006-07’, which shows that there has been an increase of more than a quarter in the number of fatal accidents in the construction industry. See the section on ‘Worker fatalities by main industry’ on the page below:
http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/fatals.htm
A literature review of exposures to asbestos over a sixty-seven year period has been newly published in the 'Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health Part B. Critical Reviews'. It is entitled ‘A review of historical exposures to asbestos among skilled craftsmen (1940-2006)’. The abstract is available on Pubmed (see link below):
'The Industrial Levy (Construction Industry) Order (Northern Ireland) 2007 (No. 343)' comes into force on the 31st August. The order can be viewed at the URL below:
An article has been published in the August issue of the 'International Journal of Project Management' on a proposed risk assessment methodology to cope with risks in complicated construction situations. It is entitled ‘Application of a fuzzy based decision making methodology to construction project risk assessment’. The abstract of the paper can be viewed from the link below:
The ‘Handbook of OSHA Construction Safety and Health’ by CD Reese and JV Eidson (2nd ed) (Taylor & Francis, 2006) has a chapter (no. 11) on Ergonomics, which covers a variety of topics including back problems and cumulative trauma disorders. If you type ‘books about construction health and safety OSHA’ into Google, you will see that the link at the top of the page provides a web preview of this publication.