HEALTH, SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENT NEWSLETTER for creating a healthy and safe workplace
In this edition:
• The quiet killers
• For them it might be too late, but...
• What are Dangerous Substances?
• Simple solutions
• These HSE ITEMS are connected to this theme!
• 5 steps for a successful THEME implementation
Dangerous substances are real quiet killers. Exposure to them can lead to serious illnesses and in some cases fatalities, even without noticing. What can you and your company do to protect your most valuable asset... the people?
• Benefits for you and your company
• Your HSEQ INCENTIVE MODEL and membership available from €15 per month!
Every year about 4,100 people die from a disease related to the work they do or have done in the past, the Inspectorate SZW wrote in a report. Almost 3,000 of those deaths are due to working with dangerous substances. More than a million Dutch people have to deal with dangerous substances at work. This often involves dangerous substances such as quartz dust and isocynates on construction sites, wood dust in furniture factories, diesel smoke in garages and welding fumes in metal companies, but also flour dust in bakeries.
The diseases people can get from the substances include asthma, COPD, infections, pulmonary fibrosis or cancer. It can take years for disease symptoms to appear.
Retirees make up 80 percent of all people who die from working with dangerous substances. ''Dangerous substances are quiet killers,'' Tamara Van Ark (former State Secretary of Social Affairs and Employment) said. According to her, it is a preventable problem. ''So we have to get to work."
Pulmonologist Dr. Jos Rooijackers says dangerous substances are virtually invisible. ''I often draw the comparison between your lungs and a vacuum cleaner. They both absorb substances, but there is one crucial difference: you can replace a vacuum cleaner bag."
pulmonologist, Dutch Knowledge Center for Labor and Lung Diseases (NKAL), Utrecht
From 2018 through 2019 the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) rolled out a Healthy Workplaces Manage Dangerous Substances campaign, aimed to raise awareness of dangerous substances in the workplace and the risks they pose, and to create a culture of prevention by disseminating campaign materials and carrying out promotional and engagement activities. HSElife NL and HSEQ Direct theme Dangerous Substances is fully alligned with this initiative and is developed in cooperation with the Dutch Focal point of EU-OSHA.
It is a preventable problem, so we have to get to work.
Dangerous
are virtuallyDr. Jos Rooijackers
Preventing exposure to dangerous substances can save countless lives. Many of workers that have been exposed became ill or died due to contact with dangerous substances. Could this be prevented? We think it could and should!
If there is anything that history can teach us is that "prevention is always better than cure". Nothing can be more true when we talk about dangerous substances at the workplace. Even more so, there's no alternative for prevention since there is no cure yet for some of the ilnesses and conditions!
Besides saving lives and saving millions, prevention of exposure to dangerous substances is also a moral duty - of employers, team leaders and supervisors but also of workers themselves. Having a healthy safety and risk awareness allows our first line workers to STOP their work if faced with unclear situations where risks are not evident and cannot be properly managed.
One of the cases that illustrates the consequences of not having a proper prevention strategy has been recently published in the media. It is about the workplaces where Chromium-VI has been used.
As we said before, prevention saves lives (and money too). To prevent exposure to dangerous substances requires good communication and information provision to the employees. In this case, a set of information booklets, toolbox meeting materials and a short training module could spare the health of hundreds of employees.
Does your company have to invent, produce and publish everything you might encounter at your workplace?
No, they don't! How about starting with the 37+ Health, Safety and Environment topics available at HSElife NL and HSEQ Direct that your first line workers can use instantly!
Within minutes, they will be prepared to avoid exposure to Dangerous substances... day-in, day-out!
It is not always easy to talk about what went wrong, but we do learn from it. "Learning from Incidents" is one of the methods to discuss it and as the title suggests, learn from it. That's how you prevent repetition! Thus, repetition is also the power of the message and therefore you keep working on prevention because that is always better than cure! Read on to find out more >
Any liquid, gas or solid that poses a risk to workers’ health or safety, can be found in nearly all workplaces.
Dealing with Dangerous Substances at the workplace should be a top priority for every company with a high-risk work environment. That is why we introduce this THEME and provide some tools for achieving this goal.
HSElife NL is an online all-in-one Health, Safety, Environment and Quality MANAGEMENT SYSTEM incorporating interactive learning, certification, communication and registrationIMPORTANT AND USABLE FOR ANY HIGH-RISK WORK ENVIRONMENT... IN ANY INDUSTRY... EVERYWHERE!
Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification. Martin H. Fischer (famous physician and author) hit the right spot with this one - it is also a philosophy that describes the essence of HSElife NL Management System. In an everchanging inudstrial landscape, we are prone to gather knowledge on a scale never seen before. It's how we provide the content and functionality to the user that separates us from others.
SAFE, SUPPORTING and READY-TO-USE are just a few words that come to mind when talking about the HSEQ platform which is a result of more than 25 years of close cooperation with first-line workers and their companies in general. What does that mean for you and your company? It means that you can effortlessly introduce this sophisticated system within a matter of minutes and start preventing exposure to Dangerous Substances.
Let us introduce just a few of the many TOOLS & SERVICES of HSElife NL which will assist you in that.
To allow companies to focus on a specific HSE subject.
Daily, for information, presentations and toolbox meetings.
Increased knowledge, awareness and alertness during work.
Asbestos / Ceramic wool, Natural gas condensate, Benzene, Caustic Soda, Chromium-VI, H2S, Mercury and Methanol are just a few of more than 37 HSE items that will give you an instant boost in preventing exposure to Dangerous Substances at the workplace.
“By using this HSE information, my team always knows how to deal with Dangerous substances” – Robert
2 3 4 5
HEALTH SAFETY ENVIRONMENT
1 1 HEALTH SAFETY ENVIRONMENT METHANOL
NATURAL GAS CONDENSATE
HEALTH SAFETY ENVIRONMENT ASBESTOS / CERAMIC WOOL January 2022 HSE guidelines
2 3 4 5 HEALTH SAFETY ENVIRONMENT CHROMIUM-VI
BENZENE
HEALTH SAFETY ENVIRONMENT WORKPLACE EDITION
HEALTH SAFETY ENVIRONMENT WORKPLACE EDITION
HEALTH SAFETY ENVIRONMENT H2S HYDROGEN SULPHIDE
HEALTH SAFETY ENVIRONMENT CAUSTIC SODA
GOAL: To enable companies to focus on a specific HSE topic. Usage is daily, for information, training, presentations and toolbox meetings resulting in increased knowledge, awareness and alertness during work. All these topics are on the site on the HSE ITEMS page >
OBSERVE - Action Focus tools:
voor een succesvolle HSE item Action Focus met het gebruik en de uitvoering Wegwijzer B INFORMEER Activiteitenformulie AARDGASCONDENSAAT
DISCUSS & REDUCE - Supporting tools:
OPS
GOAL: Inform your team directly, make requests, focus on a topic and test knowledge.
IMPLEMENT - Registration (HSElife LARS):
Go to the HSElife LARS >
GOAL: Increase awareness of specific themes or activities.
Go to the ACTION FOCUS page >
EVALUATE & COMMUNICATE - HSElife UPDATE Newsletter:
GOAL: Reducing the loss of training knowledge.
GOAL: For all nine themes, an HSElife UPDATE newsletter is produced with clear explanations of the corresponding topics, tools and advices on how to implement and communicate them to and with the shop floor.
Go to the COMMUNICATION TOOLS page >
The HSElife NL platform promotes cooperation between workfloor, management and company, with the aim of speaking the same clear language and preventing incidents and/or accidents. In other words, for any workforce that is facing hazards and risks during its daily activities.
Major benefits of using HSElife NL are improvement of your company’s Safety Performance, promoting a strong Safety Culture and reducing substantially your HSEQ spending* - resulting in less incidents!
To navigate easier through a wealth of TOOLS & SERVICES that our members can use, we divided them in several THEMES, which you can use and implement directly in your company, whenever and however it fits your daily routine. Here are the current themes that are available:
CYBER SECURITY
DANGEROUS SUBSTANCES
AVOIDING INJURIES
HEALTH PROTECTION
WORKING AGREEMENTS
SAFETY AWARENESS
WORK PREPARATION
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
COMMUNICATION
MAINTAINING KNOWLEDGE
OPSlife Messenger 2.0, XLR Academy + 7 tips free poster
Asbestos, Mercury, Chromium-VI, Methanol, Caustic Soda, Dust, smoke and fumes from heavy metals, H2S, Natural Gas condensate,...
ATEX, Flange Joints, Confined spaces, Avoiding hand injuries, PPE, Working at height,...
PPE, Dust, smoke and fumes, NORM/LSA, H2S, Nitrogen Gas, Benzene,... Work permits, LMRA, TRA, Reporting incidents, Electrical safety,... Lithium-ion batteries, Health and Safety signs, ATEX, High pressure,... Induction training On-Offshore, PtW, TRA, LMRA,... Spills, NORM/LSA, Caustic Soda, Nitrogen gas, Mercury,... OPSlife Messenger 2.0, HSElife UPDATE newsletter, Social Media,... XLR Academy
partially sponsored by The WAT Group >
Would you like to know the benefits of using both Management Systems for you and your organization or do you have questions?
starting from €permonth 15,-
Schedule a max. 30-minute personal talk here.
You can also start using both platforms directly! Visit hseqdirect.com and sign-up!
The costs for using the HSEQ Direct and HSElife NL, including the OPSlife Messenger and XLR Academy, are: We start at €15,- per month (ex. VAT, billed annually in advance). This example includes 1 organisation and max. 10 users of the platforms (giving more participants an access is always possible).
Join the more than 480 organizations who are already members of our platforms!
