Health and Safety

On November 15^th Carole Conroy came to talk about health and safety. She is a charted safety and health practitioner and teaches occupational safety at master’s level at Salford University. She started by trying to get some sort of engagement from us by asking what occupation risks there are and how it can affect people’s health. This was an OK way to get some sort of interaction from people but she probably didn’t get the interaction she would have liked but we kind of know how dangerous work environments can be especially working in labs.

We were told about an Italian man called Ramazzini who is considered to be the founder of occupational medicine. He studied trade diseases and advised doctors to ask patients about their occupations and in doing this in his own way eh created the first style of health and safety examination. She then addressed the industrial revolution which created dangerous environments like factory’s and mines and the change in the way that item were produced added to the dangers creating hazards chemically, physically with long working hours. This environment lead to conditions like infectious diseases, physical injury’s and mental illnesses. An example of this is people who made hats in the 1800’s used mercury in their production and exposure to this without protection lead to mental and physical illness. Carole then moved on to talk about the statistics of injury.

The number of non-fatal injuries in the work place in the UK for 2013/2014 - 2015/2016 was estimated to be over 622,000 people, over 196,000 of these cases were from random accidents but the most prominent one comes from lifting and handling. The number of fatalities in the UK work place in 2015/2016 was 144, from these the most prominent cause of death was from falling from great heights. The most distressing statistic comes from many deaths occur from diseases that have come from the work environment, this is estimated to be over 11,000, this is caused by cancers such as lung cancer and asbestos. From an economical side she told us that the amount of working days lost in 2014/2015 was 27.4 million days due to illness or work place injury which averages at about 15 days off per person and the economic cost to the UK for the year 2014/2015 was £14.1 billion with £8 billion of this coming out of the individuals pocket, £3.3 billion from government and £2.8 billion from employers.

Carole made this relevant to us by highlighting the number of injuries in the pharmaceutical industry which is over 570 people with the largest amount coming handing heavy goods. She developed this further  by showing examples of bad lab practices that can cause injury over the long term from things like stooping, reaching and twisting and that these can lead to things like back problems but can be overcome by having a better ergonomic environment and using COSHH.

On the surface talking about health and safety seems like it would be the most boring thing especially when society views the culture of it with such contempt but I found parts of this interesting especially the parts that were relative, I completely get how after an hour stooping you really feel it in the back and when you stand up straight it feels like a massive relief and that I will want to take my work environment into consideration when it comes to the long term. It was also sad to know that such a high number of people die in what could be in needless ways and all though we complain about health and safety when it wasn’t so prominent in the past people get diseases like asbestos poisoning and were forced to work exhausting hours. From this I feel like I’ve taken away a new appreciation for health and safety I know when I’m being informed about how to lift and signing endless paper work that it’s based on legislation that people would have done anything for in the past so I should have some appreciation for this.