Consultancy fined after inaccurate asbestos survey

From a recent HSE Press Release

"Bestoff Services Ltd of Chorleywood, Hertfordshire pleaded guilty to breaching section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. They were fined £3,000, ordered to pay costs of £2091.70 and a victim surcharge of £15.

The company carried out an asbestos survey on a site at Unit 27, Nuffield Way, Abingdon in February 2008 and reported that the site contained no asbestos. Two members of staff began work on the site the following month and part of their job involved removing panels of fibrous board."

Full details are available at:

Company fined after inaccurate asbestos survey leads to exposure

A lot of money has been made by companies carrying out asbestos surveys in recent years - not all of these surveys have been done competently. Occasionally someone gets caught out - but I'm sure a lot don't.

The HSE has tried to regulate asbestos consultancy companies by insisting on accreditation. I have never been convinced that this was the right way to address the problem. Some companies who are competent to carry out surveys and have the professional integrity to ensure that they are done properly, but who don't carry out asbestos work exclusively, find the cost of accreditation prohibitive and so pull out of the market. On the other hand, there is no guarantee that that companies who can jump all the hurdles created by UKAS and are prepared to carry the costs involved, will carry out the surveys competently in practice or that they adopt professional standards with respect to reporting their findings.

Fortunately, in the case concerned, the client company were interested in their employees' health and took the appropriate action once they became suspicious.

Frostbite

There's a good summary of the effects of frostbite, complete with some gruesome photographs, on the Catlin Arctic expedition website. Worth a look.

Green buildings?

Kamal Meattle's talk from the recent TED conference has recently been posted on the TED website.



I've already embedded the slides from the talk on a previous post.

The idea of using plants to clean up indoor air has been around for quite a while now. This talk is about a project which utilised three different plants in a building in New Dehli. The results sound interesting but both the talk and slidedeck give relatively few details. I'd like to find out more but there isn't any further detail on the websites referenced by TED and in the slides. A quick "Google" hasn't turned up anything and I've not been able to locate any relevant papers in the public domain. So I'll have to reserve judgment on how effective these plants have been until I've had chance to look into this in more detail.

"To sleep, perchance to dream"

I've been following the Catlin Arctic survey blog for updates on the expedition to the Arctic to measure the thickness of the sea ice. As well as the environmental perspective there are a number of aspects of the expedition which are of interest to occupational hygienists. Their blog and website includes information on dealing with exposure to cold including the clothing they are using and their experience of living in a cold environment.

There was an interesting post on their blog today written by the expedition's sleep analyst, Mary Morrell. This might seem like a rather strange job, but lack of sleep and disturbed sleep patterns can lead to ill health. To quote from the blog post

"Insufficient sleep (usually thought of as less than 7 hours per night) causes tiredness and fatigue. Alertness is reduced and thought processes slow down. In particular, sleep deprivation leads to slower reaction times."

In the workplace this is relevant for shift workers and personnel working unusual shift patterns and the impact on their health isn't usually considered during workplace risk assessments. So the experience gained during the expedition could have some lessons for us and it will be worth keeping an eye on the blog for any further posts on this topic.

Whats wrong with what we eat?

This video, which I found on the TED site, might be useful for my students on the Open University course T210 (Environmental control and public health) who are going to be starting the block on Food Processing and Distribution in a couple of weeks time.



It raises a few of the points covered in the block and would be a nice gentle introduction to supplement the course written materials, particularly as we don't have a tutorial scheduled during the study time for this block

Nanoparticles

I came across the following video slideshow by Andrew Maynard (2020science.org), a researcher in nanotechnology. It's a nice, gentle introduction to nanoparticles and their properties.


Nanotechnology - Managing the Small Stuff, Explained from Andrew Maynard on Vimeo.


The key points he makes about these new materials are

• the particles are small
• they are "strange" - they don't behave how you might expect and the properties of a substance manufactured or created as a nanoparticle can be different than the same substance in the form of larger particles
  
• they are "sophisticated" - in that they can be used to manufacture complex products with advanced uses
  

There are inevitable concerns about the toxicity of nanoparticles and the risks from exposure, both from an occupational and environmental context.

• the small size of the particles means that they can, potentially, be absorbed easily into the body by inhalation AND skin contact (there is evidence that some particles can be absorbed through intact skin)
• nanoparticles are much more likely to be absorbed into the blood via the lungs than their larger cousins. Once absorbed they can make their to other organs where they may be able to exert toxic effects.
  
• their small size also means that they can be potentially absorbed into cells where larger particles of the same substance would not
• the "strangeness" of nanoparticles means that it can be difficult to predict what their toxicological properties will be, even where there is a good understanding of the toxicity of larger particles of the same substance
• In some cases, effects such as cancer are due to the physical form of particles and their Small size (aka asbestos fibres) rather than their chemical nature

It is too early to now whether any of these concerns are likely to be borne out in practice. However, its an area where a lot of research is taking place.