At 12:51 04/02/2004, you wrote:
>I agree with the comments about the undesirability of reporting through
>Safety. In many NHS organisations, and some others, Safety reports
>through OH. This seems to me much more logical because trained OPs and
>OHAs have had many years more of postgraduate training and also have a
>breadth of outlook which few Safety Officers share. <snip>
I have been following this thread with interest, and wonder where the place
of occupational hygiene is in all this. By occupational hygiene I mean
broadly speaking the design and modification of the working environment so
that health problems do not occur. Many medically or safety-qualified
people are doing this successfully with or without training in it, and HSE
since its foundation has been trying to guide employers to do it without
skilled help. It is also a field that suffers from people without health
qualifications claiming a 'health and safety' remit, but it seems to me
that there is an additional problem of occupational hygiene falling down a
crack between medicine and safety. The problems occur in technically
complex environments, but also arise when over-complex (and expensive) or
inadequate solutions are applied, or when problems are unrecognised.
My main involvement is as editor of a research journal in the field rather
than a practitioner, but the problems have come home to me through having a
daughter doing a postgraduate chemistry degree in a university with what
looks like a well-staffed occupational health unit, but, it seems, no
hygiene. Amongst other problems in recent months they have been told by
those responsible for the building that the HSWA does not apply to them
because they are students, not employees, and that minimum temperatures for
workplaces have been abolished. Wherever the professional boundaries are
drawn, this does look like an emphasis on treatment rather than prevention,
and I wonder how widespread this attitude is.
Trevor
(Dr) Trevor Ogden
Editor in Chief, Annals of Occupational Hygiene
Annals on-line at http://www3.oup.co.uk/annhyg/
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North American Editor:
Professor Stephen Rappaport, [log in to unmask]
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