OH&S gone mad

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OH&S (now WHS) is not what the first post of this thread is actually about!

It's a misnamed thread.

A sticker about possible suffocation on a hotel room safe has nothing to do with OH&S (WHS) laws. But many people might think it does. That is, unless the sticker is for the benefit of the staff employed by the hotel... But it did say "Dear Guest..."
 
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Asbestos is far from the low risk substance you believe it to be.Exposure to very little asbestos can be the cause of a fatal tumour.I happen to have presented a major study on asbestos to a medical gathering in 1973.Basically everything was known then.
I don't doubt your knowledge one little bit. The same is true of diesel engine particulates. They are known (not suspected, known) to be highly carcinogenic. Diesel particulate filters are installed in all modern diesel engined cars and knowing that makes you feel all good and fuzzy inside doesn't it? Diesel though generates a lot of solid particulates that block and clog a filter fairly quickly. Far quicker than the duration between regular services, thus there has to be an automated way of unclogging the filter else the engine will be strangled and refuse to work. In modern engines, this is achieved by injecting raw fuel straight into the exhaust ahead of the filter to ignite, raising the temperature to way over 600°C which is enough to burn off the particulate ash matter enough to pass through the filter and reduce the backpressure. It's called Diesel Particulate Filter Regeneration and you'll know it's happening when you see the big orange light on your dashboard.

Those following you on the road will know it's happening because they'll be covered without warning in a massive cloud of black smog usually just after you've taken off from the traffic lights. In a normal world, this is fine. Diesel is perfectly suited to commercial vehicles, heavy industrial equipment, static powerpacks and public transport like ships, trains, boats etc. It's brilliant for those uses. Efficient, low maintenance, reliable. Everything you want. In those uses, the filter regeneration isn't even a problem because it happens naturally on long high speed runs well away from populated areas, so the soot falls to the earth and is simply absorbed into the environment.

The modern problem though comes in because diesel has been adoped for everyday commuter vehicles people choose to drive in built up residential suburb commuter traffic. An environment wholly unsuited to the diesel combustion cycle, yet we've forced it to work in this environment with turbochargers and clever gearboxes that can almost replicate the performance of equivalent petrol engines in the same environment. The problem though, is that without ever being driven on long distance, high speed runs, the particulate filters have to self-regenerate in the middle of traffic in suburban roads. I see it happening everyday and I bet everyone does. You see that brand spanky new Audi Q7/BMW X5/Range Rover/Jeep Cherokee take off from the lights in front of you and then without any sign of rapid acceleration, a great big dirty plume of black smoke gushes out the exhaust pipe totally inconsistent with what you expect from an otherwise very young model car. That's the particulate filter doing it's thing and you've just been showered in the diesel equivalent toxic soup of a bag of James Hardie super six fencing material from Wittenoom.

Some cities in the world are just waking up to this massive future potential health problem. Amsterdam has completely banned diesel engined cars from entering the CBD city limits at all times. Paris & London are considering the same thing. Turn your watch forward about 20 years and the same will start happening here when the spate of black lung cancer cases wakes the politicans up to the horror the rush to diesel was in the early 2000's.
 
Wow, I didn't plan this at all. Just pure coincidence, honest, but this article has just popped up in local rag:
Asbestos can be costly for imported car owners

I've been waiting years for BMW Mobile Tradition to bring their Art Cars exhibition back to a museum in either Sydney or Melbourne again for me to have the excuse for a status mantenance flight over to see them. Unfortunately now with the relentless rise of the OH&S brigade nonsense, I can't see this ever happening again. Why would BMW risk having all their priceless mobile works of art impounded by some little-Hitler bureaucrat with too much free time on his hands in customs impounding them for suspected asbestos until they pay off Australia's national debt in fines? They wouldn't, simple as that. Australia is just too hard and not worth the trouble. So instead of me, the tourist wanting to see them, spending my money in Sydney or Melbourne, I go to Munich instead. Well done Australia! We're really the masters of shooting ourselves in the foot.
 
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Yeah, the snowy scheme. Talk to someone who worked on the tunnels. They should have good stories about blokes climbing into the formwork to check before the concrete was poured, who never turned up to dinner that night. I'm pretty sure that we can still building concrete lined tunnels these days even with all that evil OHS.
 
If you doubt the importance of an appropriate safety and health culture and appropriately enforced WHS laws, there are many places you can go where there a few laws, lax enforcement and no concept of workplace health and safety. I see these first hand regularly, working in Asia. If you are happy letting people die when they fall from construction sites, are killed when trapped in buildings catching on fire, are electrocuted due to shoddy work practices and no idea about electrical hazards - by all means abolish OH&S.

Having said that, we (western societies) do seem to have moved to far in the direction of managing hazards, rather than risks. There is a difference between the two, something that is not widely appreciated. One of the principles of WHS is hazard elimination, but sometimes that ignores the benefit (and in some instances can create new and different risks) , which is where risk management comes in .
 
In the spirit of the thread title, I offer my own example of "OH&S gone mad"

I work in the bush in Colombia. This is a complicated country, but one thing they do love is to invent ever more laws. And this extends to OH&S.

The funny thing here is that they adopt every single "great idea" and practice from other countries, even though in reality they are not sane here. So whilst I work out in the bush, every so often a government inspector manages to get through the land mines and guerillas to visit us. It rains a lot where I work, so we tend to put up four stakes with a plastic covering so we can rest and eat out of the rain or sun. But now we have to attach two "evacuation route" signs to these shelters.

I mean, seriously??? 4 poles with a 3mx 3m sheet of plastic, in the middle of the jungle. And evacuation route signs?? We ask them which direction they should point to, and they get a bit sheepish and just say "outwards".

And there is also a requirement that any business have a full stretcher available. Every single business.

So In Bogota airport, there is a huge line of mini-stalls. These are tiny shops that sell everything from mobile phone cases to donuts. Average shop is 2m x 2m. Just enough room for the seller to stand amongst their goods. And in every single one there is a full 6 foot stretcher!!! If an A380 ever crashes there and all pax get a broken leg, they are covered.....
 
If you doubt the importance of an appropriate safety and health culture and appropriately enforced WHS laws, there are many places you can go where there a few laws, lax enforcement and no concept of workplace health and safety.
Oh don't worry, it's happening right now and has been for decades. It's precisely why Chevron built their entire Gorgon gas processing plant from imported modules and components. Almost nothing of it was fabricated locally because it was just too expensive to do so. All built in SE Asia.

Having said that, we (western societies) do seem to have moved to far in the direction of managing hazards, rather than risks. There is a difference between the two, something that is not widely appreciated. One of the principles of WHS is hazard elimination, but sometimes that ignores the benefit (and in some instances can create new and different risks) , which is where risk management comes in .
There was an absolute classic example of this where I used to work. We had a workshop with lots of mechanical presses and lathes and that sorta stuff back when manual work like that was actually being done in Australia. The workshop manager got a missive from high up that he had to look at OHS for his work areas to improve the company's overall LTI numbers for the shareholder reports. He decided all the old rotten and breaking wooden duckboards the lathe operators were standing on had to be thrown out and replaced with whizz-bang brand new plastic ones with rubber grip inserts instead. The order was placed (about $10,000 worth) and all the old familiar wooden ones were tossed. On the very first day of the new duckboards being in place, a very experienced lathe operator who had been working there since Noah was a small lad tripped over the edge of a new plastic duckboard because it wasn't the same height he'd been used to for the last 20 years and twisted his ankle for a trip to the doctor and 2 weeks off work. Two days later another worker fell off a brand new 'safety step' that had been installed as part of the same OHS overhaul when he was seen stretching to put some pipe/tube away in an overhead rack - something he had been doing perfectly successfully for years without a second thought - resulting in a dislocated shoulder when he fell to the gound. He ended up needing a reconstruction and claimed 3 months off work for the recovery. When he came back, his job no longer existed and he was retrenched.

The plastic duckboards were all gathered up and thrown in the bin. Then all new wooden duckboards were ordered at another $10,000 cost! The whole exercise was just an absolute joke. The employees were just walking around the office shaking their heads at the insanity of it all.
 
In the spirit of the thread title, I offer my own example of "OH&S gone mad"

I work in the bush in Colombia. This is a complicated country, but one thing they do love is to invent ever more laws. And this extends to OH&S.
Hahaha, classic, OH&S has even found its way to the cocaine manufacturers?!?! ;-P

I watched a documentary recently on the refugees trying to get through the Darién Gap to get to Panama City. That's one hell of an inhospitable workplace you have there! Are you a pipe pusher on a land rig?
 
There was an absolute classic example of this where I used to work. We had a workshop with lots of mechanical presses and lathes and that sorta stuff back when manual work like that was actually being done in Australia. The workshop manager got a missive from high up that he had to look at OHS for his work areas to improve the company's overall LTI numbers for the shareholder reports. He decided all the old rotten and breaking wooden duckboards the lathe operators were standing on had to be thrown out and replaced with whizz-bang brand new plastic ones with rubber grip inserts instead. The order was placed (about $10,000 worth) and all the old familiar wooden ones were tossed. On the very first day of the new duckboards being in place, a very experienced lathe operator who had been working there since Noah was a small lad tripped over the edge of a new plastic duckboard because it wasn't the same height he'd been used to for the last 20 years and twisted his ankle for a trip to the doctor and 2 weeks off work. Two days later another worker fell off a brand new 'safety step' that had been installed as part of the same OHS overhaul when he was seen stretching to put some pipe/tube away in an overhead rack - something he had been doing perfectly successfully for years without a second thought - resulting in a dislocated shoulder when he fell to the gound. He ended up needing a reconstruction and claimed 3 months off work for the recovery. When he came back, his job no longer existed and he was retrenched.

The plastic duckboards were all gathered up and thrown in the bin. Then all new wooden duckboards were ordered at another $10,000 cost! The whole exercise was just an absolute joke. The employees were just walking around the office shaking their heads at the insanity of it all.

A fine example of a manager who does not understand OHS (sic). Manager totally fails to take a systematic approach and there is a failure. Sorry that's a manager gone mad, not OHS. Still a perfect fit for a thread that doesnt' get it, either.
 
Some shots from Wittenoom, not marked on new maps but still on old ones. The info centre doesn't officially tell which road.....
 

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........OH&S has always been and continues to be a job-creation conspiratorial waste of everyone's time and money. Unfortunately no-one can ever say so, because they'll be shouted down by all the do-gooder hippies telling them to stop channelling Jeremy Clarkson + Bob Katter..........

Plenty of subsequent posts in this thread proving Legoman's statement ;)

I've spent 35 years in the mining industry in processing plants of all shapes and sizes. I've seen 2 things really expand exponentially in that time.
1. Safety Johnnies
2. Massive manipulation of safety statistics by 1. to prove they're needed and to dodge as much company insurance premium as possible.

One thing I haven't seen is a reduction in actual accidents/incidents. I will, however, grant that the reduction in long term health detriment is unquestionable. But one wonders if we needed that many safety johnnies to achieve that, and whether they're still needed.
I have 4 people in pure Safety roles at my place of work. I doubt I see them in the field once a quarter. ANY of them. I'd say the majority of my industry is similar. They push paper - not field safety.

I'm out now while the people mentioned in Legoman's quote above have their say.
 
The bureaucracy is a malignancy slowly taking over our society.Should work in hospitals.In 2005 the Morris inquiry into Bundaberg had the Director general of Health to admit under oath that 60% of salaries in the department were used for non clinical staff.As Mr.Morris said at the time if that could be reduced to 20% you could double the number of doctors,nurses,physios,OTs etc.
Unfortunately it has only got worse since then.And more importantly now working around the country in public hospitals QLD could well be the most efficient system.
Virtually all hospitals have a committee working to update the Mission statements for the hospital.Stupid me thought it should be pretty simple-treat patients to the best of our ability and safely.
Some incredible examples of waste in the public system.
 
OH&S (now WHS) is not what the first post of this thread is actually about!

It's a misnamed thread.

A sticker about possible suffocation on a hotel room safe has nothing to do with OH&S (WHS) laws. But many people might think it does. That is, unless the sticker is for the benefit of the staff employed by the hotel... But it did say "Dear Guest..."
Agree - the post probably should have been in the Humour thread :)
 
Ever since asbestos was banned, you have not been able to buy brake pads that do all three things you want from them: quiet, dust free, high friction/fade resistance. You can only have two out of those three from any modern brake pad. Asbestos gives you all three easily. That's modern progress for you. Going backwards for the sake of OH&S.
My grandfather had mesothelioma that was directly attributed to working on asbestos brake pads on tanks during WW2. That's another thing it gives you.
 
Diesel engines meanwhile have veritably exploded in popularity on the back of the rush to giant luxury 4WD's for taking the kids to school that will never leave the ashphalt in case it scratches their incredibly expensive Glasurit metallic paint jobs or their Porsche/BMW/Audi/Mercedes badges.

The difference of course is that asbestos is not sexy.
The original grievance of the "yellow vest" protesters in France was that the govt - which was elected on a platform to raise a tax on diesel because it's dangerous - actually *gasp* followed through on one of its promises.

Hard to believe in the context of Aussie politics, I know.

But anyway, digression aside, there is growing recognition that diesel is not good and this was meant to encourage people to move to electric vehicles (which, I know, also have their challenges).
 
In the spirit of this thread, and flying related, I give you:

Ladder ban for firefighters at Australia’s airports

I love the comment that they's 'formed a working group to look at alternatives' :rolleyes: Maybe the'll come up with a simulator to practice on. Then the fireys won't have to leave a desk, or maybe a stand, to train. Much safer.

Firefighters at Australia’s airports have been banned from climbing ladders more than 2-metres high in training because of the risk of falling.

In a Senate Estimates hearing that had some senators in stitches, Airservices Australia chief fire officer Glenn Wood confirmed the training ban, even though firefighters could be required to use much higher ladders in an aircraft emergency.

“We take the safety of our people very seriously and there is a risk of fall from height,” Mr Wood told the Committee for Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport.

“We’ve examined that issue and we’ve determined that at this time we will restrict our firefighters from climbing up a ladder greater than 2m so they can practice the necessary skills while we form a working group to look at alternatives.”

He went on to add “firefighters can work with ladders, they just can’t climb ladders in that sense of more than 2m”.
 
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All a bit amusing.. .. we laid thousands of km of asbestos cement pipes.
We cut the pipes in a cloud of dust.. we knew no better.
The amusing part is that the majority of the potable water in every city and town in Australia flows through..

(drum roll) …. asbestos cement pipes.. :D
 
I've posted this elsewhere, but maybe worth it again here.

'Asbestos' isn't just one thing, and some types are a lot more dangerous than others. Of the 6 types, these two are mostly in the news:

'White asbestos' - chrysotile. Its crystal form is sheets which curl up to form blunt fibres. Its pretty common in nature and the one mostly used in insulation uses, like brake linings. I have some of it on my shelf right now.

'Blue asbestos' - crocidolite (fibrous riebeckite). Its crystal form is needles and is the nasty one - Wittenoom and all that.

Chrysotile will cause cancer if the fine fibres are inhaled, but (non medically speaking) its probably little more dangerous than lots of compounds that get ground up very fine and then inhaled in quantity (such as when changing brake pads).
 
No protection for the many men in Qld diagnosed recently with silicosis from cutting the manufactured stone going in people’s new kitchens.

About 100 Qld workers have silicosis

As the son of someone who got silicosis from working in the shafts of gold mines in Kalgoorlie, I am all in favour of OH & S. He lived a long life but it got him in the end.
 
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