Health and Safety in Brief

271 Pages·2001·3.614 MB·English

by  J.R. Ridley

Health and Safety . . . in brief

Health and Safety
. . . in brief
Second Edition
John Ridley
OXFORD AUCKLAND BOSTON JOHANNESBURG MELBOURNE NEW DELHI
Butterworth-Heinemann
225 Wildwood Avenue, Woburn, MA 01801-2041
Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP
A division of Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd
A member of the Reed Elsevier plc group
First published 1998
Revised reprint 1998
Reprinted 1999, 2001
Second edition 2001
© Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd 1998, 2001
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 0 7506 5320 5
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Printed and bound in Great Britain
Contents
Preface ix
Part 1 Law 1
1 Legal processes 3
1.1 Historical background 3
1.2 Branches of law 4
1.3 Types of court 6
1.4 Court procedures 10
1.5 Law-making in UK 13
1.6 Law-making in the EU 15
2 Health and safety laws 18
2.1 A historical perspective on health and safety laws 19
2.2 The structure of health and safety laws 20
2.3 The Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 21
2.4 Health and safety law enforcement 22
2.5 The Management of Health and Safety at Work
Regulations 1999 25
2.6 Other current health and safety legislation 29
Part 2 Management 31
3 Management responsibilities 33
3.1 The role of management 33
3.2 Responsibilities for health and safety 34
3.3 Safety policy 36
3.4 Risk assessments 38
3.5 Techniques of hazard identification 44
3.6 Organization for safety at work 46
3.7 Promoting health and safety in the workplace 48
4 Human resources 53
4.1 Health and safety training 53
4.2 Young persons at work 55
4.3 Joint consultation 59
4.4 Industrial relations in health and safety 61
4.5 Human factors in health and safety 63
4.6 Insurance in health and safety 65
vi Contents
5 Workplace safety 69
5.1 Workplace Regulations 69
5.2 Office safety 79
5.3 Workplace safety signs and signals 82
6 Information and advice 87
6.1 Safety advice 87
6.2 Sources of information 88
6.3 Report writing 91
6.4 Data storage and retrieval 92
7 Accidents 94
7.1 Principles of accident prevention 94
7.2 Accident investigation 97
7.3 Accident reporting 99
Part 3 Occupational health 103
8 The body 105
8.1 Functions of the body 105
8.2 Routes of entry 109
8.3 Target organs 110
9 Health at work 111
9.1 Causes of health hazards 111
9.2 Ionizing radiations 114
9.3 Hazards from non-ionizing radiations 116
10 Health protection 117
10.1 First aid 117
10.2 Personal protective equipment 119
10.3 Safe use of display screen equipment 122
Part 4 Safety technology 125
11 Chemicals 127
11.1 Safe use of chemicals 127
11.2 Labelling of chemicals for supply and use 133
11.3 Transport of chemicals by road and rail 137
11.4 Classification of hazardous and dangerous substances for
supply 141
11.5 Approved lists 142
11.6 Exposure limits 149
11.7 Preventative and control measures 151
11.8 Handling hazardous and dangerous substances 152
11.9 Disposal of special waste 155
12 Noise and hearing protection 158
12.1 Legislation concerning noise 158
12.2 The ear 161
12.3 Noise measurement 162
12.4 Noise control techniques 164
Contents vii
13 Work equipment 167
13.1 New machinery 167
13.2 Safe use of work equipment 171
13.3 Safety with moving machinery 176
13.4 Safety during maintenance 179
13.5 Pressure systems 184
13.6 Lifting equipment 187
14 Construction 190
14.1 CDM 190
14.2 Construction health, safety and welfare 193
14.3 Construction safety 197
14.4 Employing contractors 200
14.5 Access equipment 202
14.6 Safety in demolition 204
14.7 Safety with excavations 207
15 Manual handling 210
15.1 The Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 210
15.2 Safe manual handling 211
16 Mechanical handling 215
16.1 Lifts 215
16.2 Cranes 217
16.3 Conveyors 218
16.4 Powered trucks 220
17 Safe use of electricity 224
17.1 The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 224
17.2 Safe use of electricity 227
17.3 Safe use of portable electrical equipment 231
18 Fire 233
18.1 Fire legislation 233
18.2 Causes of fires and precautions 236
18.3 Fire-fighting and extinguishers 238
18.4 Safe use of flammable substances 241
19 Environment 243
19.1 The Environmental Protection Act 1990 243
19.2 Safe and healthy working environment 245
Appendix 1 Abbreviations 247
Appendix 2 List of statutes 250
Index 253

Preface
The text of this book started life as a set of notes I used for lectures on health
and safety which became popular with the students as aides-me´moire for
their revision prior to examinations. The students came from various
positions in commerce and industry, ranging from union appointed safety
representatives through middle managers to directors. Feedback from them
indicated that they found the notes useful in their day-to-day duties. If they
could, why couldn't others – and so the book was born.
In preparing this book I have endeavoured to take some of the mystique
out of health and safety in the workplace and in simple plain English and in
practical terms, explain the hows, whys and wherefores of keeping on the
right side of health and safety laws.
It is not intended to be a substitute for the law. Readers must understand
that when the crunch comes it is the responsibility of the employer/manager
to ensure compliance with legislative requirements and, in the ultimate, for
the courts to decide if compliance has been achieved. It is hoped that this
book will help those responsible to meet their obligations and avoid running
foul of the law.
There can be no doubt, the subject is vast and complex and to meet the
objective of simplifying health and safety laws, their contents have been
polarized into major components and the overall subject broken down into
manageable parts. The text is purposefully kept brief – making use of 'bullet
points' rather than verbiage – with references to sources of information
should a particular situation demand more detailed study.
The text is restricted mainly to matters that are likely to be met in the day-
to-day work of a busy manager with safety responsibilities, an emergent
safety adviser, safety representative or those participating in safety awareness
courses. While it may be of practical help in the design and manufacture of
equipment, designers and manufacturers should refer to the various
legislation and standards that relate to their particular product. This latter
point is especially important within the context of the European Union.
With the written word it is not possible to include the inflexions of speech
or the communication of body language so a convention has been adopted
to differentiate between what is law and what is advice:
titles of and quotations from italics
legislation are in
extracts from laws are in boxes with shading and indicated by a
symbol in the left hand margin
advice and comments are in brackets or normal type face.