The UK is currently experiencing an outbreak of deaths caused by exposure to asbestos. There are currently more deaths per year caused by asbestos related illness than road traffic accidents. To combat this, health and safety legislation has been put in place to ensure that the current generation of British workers are not put at the same risks. The law now states that any workers who are at risk of exposure to asbestos throughout the achievement of their everyday work duties must go through suitable and adequate Asbestos Awareness Training that is intended to make them aware of the risks presented by asbestos, and in addition, how they should react when asbestos is discovered in their workplace.

Whenever work is carried out on a building that was built prior to the year 2000 there is a risk that asbestos will be present. People most at risk from exposure are largely catagorised as trades people. Persons who work in the plumbing, carpentry, or electricians trades are acutely at risk due to the fact that their work often involves using power tools on surfaces that may be made with asbestos.

As far as actually working on asbestos or removing ACM’s (asbestos containing materials) from a premises are concerned, there are two main classifications regarding the type of asbestos containing material that will decide if you can complete this work yourself, or if you will need to contract in a lisenced specialist. Textured coatings used on ceilings and asbestos cement can be worked on to a very limited degree by non-licensed personel although the tasks they can complete regarding these surfaces are limited to the drilling of holes, painting and repairing. Even non-lisenced personel should not undertake these tasks unless they are trained in working with asbestos, Asbestos Awareness Training is not enough. Below is a breif rundown on the different types of asbestos and where they are commonly found.

Blue Asbestos.
Sprayed pipe insulation and coatings, perhaps the most dangerous method of use for asbestos of all, due to the high levels of asbestos used (upto eighty five percent). The friability of the fibres in the sprayed insulation is very high due to the loose bonding used to increase insulation. Blue asbestos is also found in preformed insulation and lagging. It is the most hazardous of all types of asbestos.

White Asbestos.
White asbestos was the most widely used of all types of asbestos in the UK. There seems to be a common fiction that white asbestos is safe to work on and that the firbres do not pose any real hazard to health, this is not the case and many deaths in the UK have been caused by white asbestos. Application for white asbestos included tile adhesives, soundproofing sheets and fake coals or logs used in gas fires.

Brown Asbestos.
Thermal insulation boards and spraying applications, and ceiling boards. Brown asbestos is made from amosite, a variety of asbestos that was mined from the asbestos mines of south africa, hence the accronym integrated in its name, (“amos” part of “amosite”). Mostly used for its fire retardent properties.

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Did you know that you can seriously reduce your businesses insurance costs providing your management with IOSH Managing Safely ensures they are educated to recognised standards in health and safety. Training provided by IOSH the institute of occupational safety and health is one such means of acheiving this end. But there are ofcourse supplementary advantages of your companies management completing such training, a few of which I have detailed below:

#1. research has shown that based on the estimated number of workers worldwide, an average of over thirty eight million days are lost each year because of workplace injuries and poor health. This information should be enough to send alarm bells off in the minds of managers and business owners with any amount of common sense.

It is well known that the most common reasons for absence among workers are generally related to health problems. It is ofcourse to be expected for the human body to get stressed occasionally by home issues or work and end up having being run down or have a touch of flu. That said, a business needs to have precautions in place to ensure that they are not causing such ailments by overworking and undersupporting their workforce. if these cases are occuring regularly it would be a shrewd idea to look for a failure in the management system in taking precautionary measures. Also if the illness is caused by another oversight in the workplace where safety measures have fallen short of the mark then such disease could not be in any way considered as normal. Examples of this type of scenario would be that of exposure to hazardous or toxic chemicals used in the workplace. When looking at factory or industrial workers, this type of environment is nearly always present. Exposure to harmful substances of this nature would most likely affect the health of an employee in a negative manner resulting in a prolonged absence from work or conceivably worse. An increase in absenteeism is also bad for business as it results in less workers or workforce which has a knock on effect and damages the whole companies productivity and therefore income.

IOSH Managing Safely training is an ideal way to ensure that your entire management team are trained to a competent standard in order to ensure that situations like the ones above are identified and corrective actions are put into place before your business is put in jeapordy by a serious breech of health and safety legislation. Managers who have completing the training will be far more proficient with regards to completing risk assessments and spotting potential hazards before the risk is realized and you have a serious accident on your hands.

#2. Figures obtained from a recent survey suggest that around 25,000 people are leaving the workforce each year never to return to work because of harm or injury they experienced during the course of their employment, if more managers were trained to a knowledgeable level in the management of health and safety this figure could be significantly lower. The injuries resulting in permenant incapacity were far more prevelant in industries where heavy machines and plant were in use, and a significant number of those injured recieved permenant disabilies or required a wheelchair.

Although it is true that some accidents simply could not have been forseen and therefore avoided, there is still a vast number of accidents occuring in the UK each year that could be significantly reduced by a more proactive and hand on approach if management were more aware of how to spot unchecked hazards and correclty implement controls to minimise risk.

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