For them it might be too late, but for the others...

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.

Prevention and the proper Safety Culture

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 >

THEME: DANGEROUS SUBSTANCES

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.