DML, a company that refits warships and submarines for the Royal Navy, has pleaded guilty to exposing up to twenty-four subcontractors to asbestos dust. Plymouth Magistrates Court was told up to twenty-four subcontractors were exposed to white asbestos while refurbishing a building. Ronald Boyd, for the HSE, said tests had suggested that occasionally asbestos levels could have been ninety times higher the exposure standard. On average over a three-day period, tests showed the men could have been exposed to twice the allowed safety standard. He said: "Up to twenty-four young men must now agonise for forty years whether at some stage they are going to suffer symptoms of mesothelioma, asbestosis or cancer.' The case was committed to Plymouth Crown Court for sentencing. The TUC’s asbestos cancer maps reveal asbestos work in Plymouth’s docks have made it one of the country’s top cancer sites, with over six hundred asbestos-related deaths recorded since the 1997 general election.
The TUC has warned the Government and the Health and Safety Commission that their plans (contained in Revitalising health and safety) to reduce the sickness absence caused by workplace injuries and illness by 30% by 2010 have no chance of success without a legal duty on employers to plan rehabilitation for victims, or a major expansion in the rehabilitation services available to victims.
The TUC released figures from a survey of workplace safety reps showing that only 23% of employers provide access to rehabilitation for injured workers, which is less than the 30% using sickness absence monitoring for disciplinary purposes.
Employers have a legal duty to prevent injury and illness and a legal duty to pay compensation where they fail, but no duty to get the people they injury back to work and back to fitness. Rehabilitation is the missing link. The TUC is calling on the Government to give employers a legal duty to develop a rehabilitation policy as part of the safety policy they are already required to have.
Employers are failing to control the causes of work-related asthma. As a result, 20 people a day needlessly develop this debilitating and potentially life-threatening condition.
The TUC is calling for a legally binding Approved Code of Practice (ACoP) to set out in detail what employers must do to prevent asthma. TUC Senior Policy Officer Owen Tudor said, 'No one needs to develop asthma at work, so anyone who does has cause to be very bitter indeed. People only get one set of lungs, and employers have shown that guidance and general rules aren’t enough. We need a specific legal code on asthma to breathe some life back into workers’ lung safety.'
A survey of nearly a thousand union safety reps in workplaces where asthma-causing substances are used regularly showed that few employers were carrying out all of their general legal obligations. This shows that employers need specific instructions about how to deal with asthma. Existing legislation requires employers to make substitution the first step employers take, with breathing equipment the last.
Workers likely to be exposed, range from those in manufacturing, carpenters and painters to bakers and nurses. The TUC estimates that about 7,000 people a year develop asthma as a result of their work.
| TUC Health & Safety Pages | http://www.vl28.dial.pipex.com/ |
| Heath & Safety At Work Act 1974 | http://www.healthandsafety.co.uk/haswa.htm |
| Health & Safety Legislation UK | http://www.lawrights.co.uk/satw.html |
| Employment Law UK | http://www.emplaw.co.uk/free/i23.htm |
| Health & Safety News | http://www.safetynews.co.uk/ |
| Environmental Health at Work Resorces | http://www.agius.com/hew/index.htm |
| Institute of Occupational Safety & Health | http://www.iosh.co.uk/home.cfm |
| Ergonomics in H & S | http://www.ergonomics.org.uk/press/press2.htm |
| European agency in H & S | http://osha.eu.int/ew2001/ew2001.php?lang=en&id=4 |
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