Lawford Kidd's Blog

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) recently appointed a new head to its agricultural section after the existing head - Graeme Walker - retired. He is being replaced by Rick Brunt, who was formerly in charge of field operations for the North West.

Leading the agricultural division is an important responsibility because, despite improvements in recent years, agriculture remains one of Britain’s most dangerous industries.

Agriculture accident statistics

Just over one in a hundred workers (employees and the self-employed) work in agriculture, forestry and fishing but, according to the HSE, the sector accounts for about one in five fatal injuries to workers.

A woman who contracted mesothelioma after washing her husband’s asbestos-contaminated clothing has been awarded £700,000 in damages, reports the Evening Standard.

Ronald Haxton died in 2009 from mesothelioma that he contracted as a result of exposure to asbestos dust during his job dismantling old boilers. His wife, Monica, used to hand-wash his overalls that were covered with the asbestos dust, and in 2012 she was diagnosed with the same fatal condition.

Mr Haxton’s employers had admitted liability for his death, but had rejected a negligence claim over her own terminal illness. However, the Appeal Court found in Mrs Haxton’s favour and ordered the company to pay compensation.

Revised guidance for employers and employees on working at height has been launched by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

The move comes as part of the Government’s commitment to crack down on regulations that it believes are overly complicated, out of date or too burdensome.

Working at height

Working at height is very common in the working environment, with an estimated ten million workers thought to carry out jobs that require them to work at height at some point every year.

A new approach to health and safety prosecutions has meant that employers who commit serious breaches of health and safety are now receiving much tougher penalties, according to a recent Government report.

Impact of Health and Safety Offences Act

The report covers the five years following the introduction of the Health and Safety Offences Act in 2009, which increased the maximum penalties the courts could impose for certain health and safety offences as a deterrent for would-be offenders.

In particular, the Act:

A new study from the University of Surrey has highlighted the potential risk to worker health from shift work after it found that the daily rhythms of our genes are disrupted when sleep times shift.

Researchers placed twenty-two participants on a 28-hour day in a controlled environment without a natural light-dark cycle.  As a result, their sleep-wake cycle was delayed by four hours each day, until sleep occurred 12 hours out of sync with their brain clock and in the middle of what would have been their normal ‘daytime’. The team then collected blood samples to measure the participants’ rhythms of gene expression.

During this disruption of sleep timing, there was a six-fold reduction in the number of genes that displayed a circadian rhythm (a rhythm with an approximately 24 hour period). This included many regulators associated with transcription and translation, indicating widespread disruption to many biological processes.