Tuesday, 3 October 2023
We respectfully acknowledge Aboriginal peoples as the Traditional Custodians of this land on which we deliver our services to the communities throughout Western Australia. We acknowledge their enduring connection to the lands, waterways and communities and pay our respects to Elders past and present.
As part of October’s Safe Work Month, WorkSafe WA welcomes you to Breathe easy: Occupational health and hygiene forum.
This forum is one of several events held within our overarching theme for 2023, Our way forward: Prioritising healthy and safe workplaces. Find out more at dmirs.wa.gov.au/safeworkmonth
Welcome to the first Safe Work Month event for 2023, Breathe easy: occupational health and hygiene forum.
The health and safety of workers both physical and psychological is extremely important, and the respiratory health of workers is a key priority for the State Government.
Safe Work Month provides many opportunities to learn more about health and safety in workplaces. Today’s workplaces present a number of challenges to both the physical and mental health of workers, and much positive action is being taken across our State to address these challenges. This helps create stronger safety mindsets, behaviours and practices that support the prevention of harm.
This forum will provide valuable information and advice on issues surrounding the respiratory health of workers. Please take what you learn today back to your workplaces and use it to help improve safety and health outcomes.
Hosting this event is one of the important steps we’re taking to help tackle workplace health and safety in the realms of occupational health and hygiene. Respiratory hazards are an area of focus for WorkSafe, recognising there is more to do to reduce risks from atmospheric contaminants in many sectors.
Today we bring together a range of industry experts to discuss current challenges in occupational health and hygiene, from silica and asbestos, to diesel engine exhaust, carcinogens, ventilation and more.
We hope this forum will further empower those attending to take meaningful action to ensure all WA workplaces are safe and healthy.
8.00 am Registration
9.00 am MC’s introduction Geoff Hutchison Conference facilitator and conversation specialist. Former ABC broadcaster — Foreign Correspondent, 7.30 Report
9.10 am Welcome to Country Robyn Collard and grandson Tryse Rioli with didgeridoo
9.20 am Welcome address Hon Bill Johnston MLA Minister for Mines and Petroleum, Industrial Relations
9.30 am Keynote session:
Progress and challenges in indoor air quality and ventilation
Recent progress and ongoing inter-disciplinary challenges in the provision of clean indoor air and associated health risk management
10.20 am Old diseases, new approaches
How did we miss it and what are we doing now about the resurgence of occupational respiratory illnesses?
Professor Dino Pisaniello School of Public Health University of Adelaide
Tracey BencePresident, Australian Institute of Occupational Hygienists
10.50 am SafeTea Morning SafeTea
11.30 am Diesel engine exhaust
How workers can be exposed, the health risks associated with exposure, and control measures available to protect workers and reduce cancer risk
12.00 pm Radiation, including inhalable carcinogenic agents
Regulating worker exposures to radiation from naturally occurring radionuclides in WA’s mining industry
Dr Matthew Govorko KNOW Workplace Cancer Coordinator, Cancer Council of WA12.30 pm
Breathing easy beyond the workplace: The interplay between WHS and public health
The overlap between workplace health and safety and public health for a variety of hazards, including asbestos, metals and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)
1.00 pm Lunch and networking
Pierina Otness Senior Toxicologist, Department of Health2.00 pm The closure of Wittenoom and demolition in asbestos contaminated environments
Timeline of the Wittenoom closure and town site demolition works recently undertaken within the Wittenoom asbestos management area
2.30 pm Lung carcinogens in the workplace
A discussion around Australia’s workplace lung carcinogens, including diesel engine exhaust, welding fumes, asbestos, and silica dust, as well as environmental tobacco smoke and pollution from vaping
3.10 pm Closing remarks
Co-presenters:
Joshua Caccetta
Director, Property and Risk Management, Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage and Samuel Jackson Director, Thuroona Services
Panel discussion facilitator: MC Geoff Hutchison
Panelists:
Sally North
Dino Pisaniello
Tracey Bence
Matthew Govorko
Pierina Otness
Sally North Acting WorkSafe Commissioner
3.30 pm Tour of Optus Stadium Optional
4:30 pm Forum concludes
The Hon Bill Johnston is Western Australia's Minister for Mines and Petroleum, Energy, Hydrogen Industry and Industrial Relations.
He has been a Minister for the McGowan Labor Government since March 2017, and has previously been Minister for Commerce, Electoral Affairs, Asian Engagement and Corrective Services.
So far, his achievements include cutting red-tape for the mining industry, introducing the Work Health and Safety Bill (industrial manslaughter provisions) and assisting in revolutionising Western Australia’s energy system.
In Opposition he served as Shadow Minister for State Development and Energy from 2012, and Shadow Minister for Mines and Petroleum from 2013.
He was a Member of the Economics and Industry Standing Committee and Deputy Chair of the Inquiry into Domestic Gas Prices from 2010 to 2011.
Prior to entering Parliament, he was the State Secretary of WA Labor from 2001 until 2008, with responsibility for all State and Federal election campaigns.
Keynote speaker
Professor
Dino PisanielloB. Sc. (Hons), MPH, PhD, Grad Cert Online Learning (Higher Ed), FAIOH COH (rtd) FRACI FAIHS
Dino Pisaniello is Adjunct Professor in Occupational and Environmental Hygiene (OEH) and recently retired director of the OEH Laboratory and Adelaide Exposure Science and Health in the School of Public Health at the University of Adelaide. He is Visiting Professor at the University of Indonesia and Chair of the College of Fellows of the Australian Institute of Health and Safety.
Dino is a past president of the Australian Institute of Occupational Hygienists and from 2001 - 2005 was chairman of the Congress of Occupational Safety and Health Association Presidents.
He is a past Australian secretary of the International Commission on Occupational Health, and past president of the Australian and New Zealand Association of OHS Educators. From 1997-2021, he was the chief technical advice coordinator for HAZMAT for the South Australian Emergency Agencies.
He has led projects for various national and international funding bodies and organisations including ARC, Commonwealth Department of Health, US Department of Defense, Defence Science and Technology Group and Safe Work Australia. Dino works with various professional and industry groups to translate evidence into practice in order to advance the health and wellbeing of communities in Australia and internationally.
Tracey Bence is a Work Health and Safety professional who brings a pragmatism, passion and empathy to business decisions involving health and hygiene risks and worker wellbeing. With a bias towards practical application of exposure science and technical safety, she has decades of experience in complex process and major hazard facilities in oil and gas and mining sectors.
Her occupational hygiene career in Australia and the United States includes assignments involving health risk communication for business leaders and building technical occupational hygiene and health capability within multinational operations.
With expertise in most occupational hygiene hazards, health basis of design, global pandemic response and leadership of technical teams, her passion is in the anticipation of health risk, rapid intervention to prevent avoidable harm from over exposures and reduction of unacceptably high rates of fatalities caused by occupational respiratory diseases in this country.
Tracey holds a Masters in Occupational Hygiene and Toxicology, is a Certified Occupational Hygienist (COH®), Fellow of the Australian Institute of Occupational Hygienists (AIOH®) and current President of the AIOH®.
Dr Matthew Govorko currently works at Cancer Council WA where he is responsible for delivering Cancer Council’s national occupational and environmental cancer prevention project, called KNOW Workplace Cancer.
Previously, Dr Govorko completed his PhD at Curtin University’s School of Population Health researching asbestos exposure in the residential environment. His doctoral studies involved the development, validation, and implementation of a mobile phone app, called ACM Check, to be used as a screening tool to identify asbestos-containing materials (ACM) in and around residential settings.
Dr Martin Ralph is the Regional Inspector of Mines for the west region of the state and leads the state-wide health team. Among other duties he provides regulatory oversight of, and guidance to, mining operations that encounter naturally occurring radionuclides (NORs).
Prior to re-joining the Mines Safety Inspectorate in 2017, Martin was chief executive officer of a large not-for-profit workplace health and safety organisation. In this timeframe he also acted as the radiation safety officer for several WA-based mining operations, and as an expert witness on a review of radioactivity associated with mineral sands mining in Victoria.
Martin is a certified radiation professional, and has worked with the United Nations on radiation safety in Malaysia’s tin mining industry.
Martin recently completed his doctoral thesis, in which he examined nearly 100 years of Western Australian mine worker exposures to NORs, and evaluated the impacts of revised radiation exposure risk factors on WA’s mining workforce.
Pierina Otness has worked as an occupational hygienist in the mining and health industries and is a full member of the Australian Institute of Occupational Hygiene (MAIOH), a “risk management” member of the Faculty of Asbestos Management of Australia and New Zealand (FAMANZ) and a member of the Australasian Land and Groundwater Association (ALGA) and Australasian College of Toxicology and Risk Assessment (ACTRA).
She is currently the senior toxicologist in the Environmental Health Directorate, Department of Health Western Australia. With a career spanning across both occupational and environmental health, Pierina has developed a strong interest in health risk assessment of contaminants in air, soil and water and in health risk communication.
Joshua Caccetta has been with the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage since 2010 and is the Director for the Property and Risk Management Directorate. The Directorate consists of the contaminated sites team, lease management compliance team, and land and field management team. It is also responsible for overseeing the Northampton lead tailings and closure of the former Wittenoom town site projects.
Joshua has a bachelor’s degree (double major) in Public Policy and Management, and Politics and International Studies, and a graduate certificate in Business (Public Sector Management).
Samuel Jackson is a Director of Thuroona Services and HazRad Australia, both entities performing hazardous waste remediation and collection across Australia. Samuel is both a director and full member of Remediation of FAMANZ (MFMANZ).
Samuel is a Class A Asbestos licence holder and licenced asbestos assessor with significant experience over 15 years in complex asbestos removal and contaminated site remediation, including in significant emergency asbestos incidents. Recent examples of such incidents include Cyclone Seroja and the Wooroloo bushfires.
Sally North is the Acting WorkSafe Commissioner, greatly valuing the opportunity to make a difference to the community through WorkSafe’s education, inspections, investigations, legal and regulatory support teams and through collaborating with stakeholders.
Sally has led a WorkSafe directorate including specialist teams on human factors and ergonomics, asbestos, occupational hygiene, plant and engineering, and industry groups covering the public sector and related industries, and the retail and service industries. She has also acted as the Deputy WorkSafe Commissioner and is involved in state and national committees and working groups on work health and safety.
Sally has qualifications in chemistry, OSH, occupational hygiene and business administration.
In 2022 Geoff farewelled his ABC Radio Perth audience after 16 years behind the microphone. Before that he was the ABC’s Europe correspondent; a senior reporter and chief of staff at the 7.30 Report and in his fresh-faced youth, an award-winning sports reporter with the Nine Network.
Geoff has long been at the forefront of public discussion on the things that matter; political and cultural machinations, government decision making, how our society is adapting to change in extraordinary times. He is a careful listener, a probing interviewer and approaches all issues with great empathy, understanding and a 40-year media instinct for what might happen next.
He has hosted an extraordinary array of public events for the National Broadcaster, covering a diverse range of subjects, from mental health forums to deeply moving discussions about dementia.