Lawford Kidd's Blog

RoSPA is urging other parts of the UK to consider lowering the drink-drive limit after publishing a response to the proposal in Scotland.

Experts estimate that a 50mg limit would save between 77 and 168 lives a year in England and Wales, which could increase to as many as 300 lives annually by the 6th year.

The Scottish Government's consultation paper suggests that a lower limit could save as many as 17 lives a year on Scotland’s roads.

An Essex packaging company has been fined after one of its employees sustained a serious hand injury on an unguarded laminating machine.

Gary Dean had the skin on the palm of his left hand torn away in the incident on 26th September 2011.

He was using a glue laminating machine when he noticed an indent mark on a finished product. He put his left hand into the machine via an unguarded portal to scrape away dried glue residue from a roller that had caused the blemish, but his whole hand was drawn into the roller and the palm of his left hand was de-gloved.

Not-for-profit campaign group, the Association of Personal Lawyers (APIL), has criticised proposed new rules on how insurance companies search their historical records if a potential claim for compensation is being made against them, saying that they are “wide of the mark”.

Responding to a consultation by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) on new search procedures, APIL has pointed out that for injured or ill workers to successfully claim compensation, it must be established which insurers provided employers' liability cover at the time they were injured or exposed. However, this can sometimes be a problem, as APIL president Karl Tonks explained:

“Victims of asbestos-related disease can become ill many years after they are exposed at work, by which time the records can be harder to find. Sometimes they are never found and those people are left with nowhere to turn.”

A coalition of road safety and environmental organisations have launched a campaign protesting the government's plans to increase speed limits on motorways to 80mph.

The No to 80 coalition is highlighting the huge costs to society of the proposal, which it predicts will exceed £1 billion annually in economic terms, mean more families needlessly suffering from motorway crashes and casualties, millions of tonnes more carbon pumped into the atmosphere each year and further damage to tranquillity in the countryside.

80mph limits are predicted by experts to result in more violent road deaths and serious injuries, causing unnecessary trauma and suffering. One academic estimated it would lead to 25 extra deaths and 100 more serious injuries each year.

Proposed new changes to existing EU legislation, backed by the European Parliament's Public Health Committee, would trigger an automatic EU safety evaluation in the event of a safety alert about a medicinal product in any EU Member State.

These changes would ensure that the adverse effects of medicinal products will be better monitored, to prevent the recurrence of cases like the French diabetes medicine "Médiator" (benfluorex), which led to many deaths.

"Médiator" (benfluorex) was authorised to treat diabetes but was widely prescribed as an appetite suppressant. It was on the market for over thirty years, and caused between 500 and 2,000 deaths, showing the limits of the early EU pharmacovigilance system.