Girls Aloud on occupational health?

I wouldn't admit to being a fan of Girls Aloud - I'm not sure what it would do to my reputation of I did! However, it was good to see the article in the Observer today about the campaign by Nicola Roberts, the red headed, pales skinned member of the group, against the use of sunbeds by under 18s. She features in a documentary - "Nicola Roberts – The Truth About Tanning", on BBC3 on Thursday 4th February.

Excessive exposure to UV radiation can lead to a number of skin problems including malignant melanoma. Young people are particularly vulnerable. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the risk of melanoma was increased by 75% in people who started using sunbeds regularly before the age of 30. Yet peer pressure forces many pales skinned young people to use sun beds to try to give themselves a fashionable tan.

We cover the risks of non-ionising radiation on BOHS module M201 "Thermal Environment and Non-ionising radiation" which we are running w/c 22 March. I can't promise that Girls Aloud will be performing though!

Photo credit: Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/22948324@N08/2520077527/

P601 and competence in LEV testing

I received the following query a few days ago:

A large part of my working life during the last 14 years has been involved with the Thorough Examination and Test of Local Exhaust Ventilation (LEV) systems within the company I work for.

I have now moved on within the same company to a health and safety position, but over the last two years, I have been training another person to carry out the LEV testing under my direct supervision. This person I feel is now capable of carrying out the full inspection and tests on his own.

Being qualified myself to the BOHS P601 standard, can I signs off the reports done by my trainee as being correct (if I feel they are done to a satisfactory standard) or does he need to prove he is competent himself by attending a formal course such as the P601.

This was my answer:

"COSHH requires that anyone carrying out any work required by the Regulations must be competent. This applies to the testing of LEV systems.

Passing P601 is a way of demonstrating competence to test LEV systems to an employer, client or the regulatory authorities. HSE strongly encourage those testing LEV systems to have passed P601, but it is not a legal requirement as such (although I do know of one situation where an Inspector placed an Improvement Notice on a company that required their personnel to take P601).

If you are certain that your colleague is competent and you could demonstrate this by some means if challenged (particularly by the HSE) then, it is probably not necessary for him to have taken the course. It is more important for consultancy/testing companies who provide a service to ensure there staff have the qualification as a means of reassuring the client that they know what they are doing. There are lots of companies offering LEV testing and not all of them are competent.

So, you need to make your own decision based on how confident you are that you can satisfy the HSE that your colleague is competent.

Of course, the above is only my personal opinion. A HSE Inspector could have a different view!"

What's a safe dose?

It was interesting to see an article in The Guardian yesterday discussing dose response relationships and threshold doses. Generally, increasing the dose of a substance increases the severity of the effect it causes. Similarly, for a given effect, due to individual susceptibility increasing the dose leads to an increase in the response – i.e. the number of people affected. For most substances, however, there is a threshold dose – that is a dose below which no-one is affected. This is because at doses below he threshold, the body’s mechanisms can deal with the substance, preventing harm. This can be represented graphically.

Typical dose-response curve showing a "threshold dose" (source:http://www.unido.org/index.php?id=5297)

With some substances, such as carcinogens and sensitisers, it is not possible to detect a threshold experimentally. It is argued that this is because they do not have one . The response is still dependant on the dose and at very low doses there are still some people who will be affected, albeit a relatively small number. Nevertheless, there is no “safe dose”. In such cases the dose-response curve is likely to be linear.

The Guardian article discusses the views put forward by an Oxford University physicist, Wade Allison, who has published a book in which he argues that there is a threshold for the effects of ionising radiation. He contends that DNA damage caused by exposure below this threshold dose can be repaired by the cells natural processes. This goes against the established view that radiation, like other direct acting carcinogens, has a dose response curve which doesn’t have a threshold, so that there is no identifiable dose below which adverse effects do not occur. Other radiation specialists are quoted in the article who do not support his view.

The difficulty with carcinogens is that at low doses it isn’t possible to accurately determine whether there is an effect. Cancer can be caused by many agents, including some related to lifestyle (e.g. smoking) and natural sources (e.g. background radiation from cosmic radiation and from rocks) and in reality we are normally simultaneously exposed to multiple agents. At low doses a carcinogen, such as radiation, is only associated with very low incidences of the disease. So it can be difficult to determine exactly what is the causative agent. If there is a threshold, it is likely to be very low, and detecting it would be difficult.

HSE Publications on-line

When I was a young junior occupational hygienist working in industry (a long, long time ago!) one of my bosses' favourite sayings that an occupational hygienist is only as good as his information sources, and, consequently, he always emphasied the importance of having a good library of books and other documents. Of course, in those days, before the advent of the Internet, we had to rely on text books and printed copies of documents published by HSE, NIOSH, ACGIH. It was important that they were kept up to date which entailed purchasing new copies of documents we already had when a new edition came out.

The Internet has changed this to a large extent. Many information sources are now online. This has the benefit of easy acess and ensures that you have the most up to date information - printed documents (particularly toxicological information) can be out of date the moment its published!

The HSE have been quite slow in putting information on-line. The HSE website has improved over the years but the information available has been restricted. Many of their key publications had to be purchased via HSEbooks. They were clearly seen as a source of income. However, this has changes as fairly recently the hSE has made many of their key publications available on-line as pdf documents. They can be read on-line or downloaded from here.

Particularly useful documents now available free of charge include

• HSG173: Monitoring strategies for hazardous substances
• HSG258 : Controlling airborne contaminants at work: A guide to local exhaust ventilation (LEV)
• HSG53 : Respiratory protective equipment at work: A practical guide
• The COSHH ACoP
  
• HSG 170 : Vibration solutions: Practical ways to reduce the risk of hand-arm vibration injury
• L108 : Controlling Noise at Work