H&S gone mad

Lynton

Lynton

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Lynton (yes really!)
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H&S chappie here from Head Office today.

Apparently we need to measure the temperature of the hot and cold water in each sink a day and record it. (Because eveyone does it at home, right?) :cuckoo:

He has a test kit in the back of his car (I am guessing it's a thermometer?)
 
Good grief...

The hot water in our place is phenomenally hot. A while ago we were asked for ways in which the company could be more environmentally friendly and quite a few people suggested that reducing the hot water temperature a few degrees would save energy. We were told that they couldn't do it due to some set of rules - H&S or public health or some such. Can't remember the specific excuse I'm afraid...


Cheers,

Jez.
 
jezgb said:
Good grief...

The hot water in our place is phenomenally hot. A while ago we were asked for ways in which the company could be more environmentally friendly and quite a few people suggested that reducing the hot water temperature a few degrees would save energy. We were told that they couldn't do it due to some set of rules - H&S or public health or some such. Can't remember the specific excuse I'm afraid...


Cheers,

Jez.
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Ah we get round that by having a sign up saying, and I kid you not, "Caution. Hot water is hot!"
 
Thats the way things are going unfortunately. If a light bulb blows at my fathers work, he has to phone a man to come from 38 miles away just to replace it!! 76 mile round trip for a few seconds work that anyone is capable of.
 
DavidBloor said:
Marks and Spencer Cod fillets, warning may contain fish.
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Ha ha, and the warning on all packets of nuts saying that "this product may contain nuts".... well I hope so, thats why I bought them!
 
Lynton said:
Ah we get round that by having a sign up saying, and I kid you not, "Caution. Hot water is hot!"
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We've got those too.
And big arrow signs showing us which way to turn the taps to turn them off.

They're quite happy to have workmen in drilling away all frigging day on the floor below our office though. :bang::bang: As long as we're ok on H&S, sod common sense.
 
indiabravo said:
Thats the way things are going unfortunately. If a light bulb blows at my fathers work, he has to phone a man to come from 38 miles away just to replace it!! 76 mile round trip for a few seconds work that anyone is capable of.
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This is a common practice with a lot of ill managed companies and pedantic local authorities nowadays for all sorts of things not just bulbs. I would hazard a guess that most complaints about government cuts to public spending could be resolved by common sense and less misinterpretation of stupid rules. H&S is important and costs money and in many cases rightly so, however blinkered stupidity is free. :naughty:
 
Legionnaire's disease lives in (hot) water systems if they are merely quite warm, as opposed to skin removingly hot, hence the hot water now being hot enough to make tea in, that is the reason also why Companies cannot reduce the temp of the hot water. Similarly the cold water needs to be cold and not tepid.
Seems like a stupid rule but is quite sensible when you delve a little.

Matt
 
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MatBin said:
Legionnaire's disease lives in (hot) water systems if they are merely quite warm, as opposed to skin removingly hot, hence the hot water now being hot enough to make tea in, that is the reason also why Companies cannot reduce the temp of the hot water. Similarly the cold water needs to be cold and not tepid.
Seems like a stupid rule but is quite sensible when you delve a little.

Matt
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I understand that, but surely it could live in the hot water syatem at home, and I don't check the water there at all. Likewise Legionnaires has been around for yonks.... so has H&S so why testing it now?
 
MatBin said:
Legionnaire's disease lives in (hot) water systems if they are merely quite warm, as opposed to skin removingly hot, hence the hot water now being hot enough to make tea in, that is the reason also why Companies cannot reduce the temp of the hot water. Similarly the cold water needs to be cold and not tepid.
Seems like a stupid rule but is quite sensible when you delve a little.

Matt
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Yep, it lives in warm water systems between 20 - 45 degrees C and is caught by breathing in contaminated water vapour / droplets.

Lynton said:
I understand that, but surely it could live in the hot water syatem at home, and I don't check the water there at all. Likewise Legionnaires has been around for yonks.... so has H&S so why testing it now?
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They are probably having a push on it - every now and then they have an iniative and have a push on various topics, such as VDU's, lifting in the workplace etc.

At the end of the day it is a back covering exercise to stop any claims. Legionnaires is a notifibale (sp) disease which can kill. If you catch it at work, then it is classed as an industrial / workplace issue and the claims are higher as you start getting into negligence. At home, there is no-one to sue as such, as the vast majority of people have access to change the water temperature.
 
At my previous company they were more than happy for us to delve around in the guts of equipment with 18kV at a significant current with no training, special equipment or safety procedures whatsoever.

Weren't allowed to wire a plug though, oh no...

:nono::rules:
 
Legionella is not found in hot water systems that provide hot water via a tap. It can be found in shower heads though.
 
I can't believe nobody has mentioned the dirty word yet?.....risk assessment :|
 
I used to be a skydive instructor in Florida. The parachutes from new had a label saying that although it was a parachute and was sold as such, it was not sold or intended to be a life saving device. Only a bit of sports equipment hahahahaha

There is also a device the fires your emergency reserve chute called an AAD (automatic activation device). Used if you can’t deploy your reserve chute ... maybe you have been knocked out. So a bit of kit made to deploy a bit of kit to save your life.

The label on that said this device is not to be relied on to activate another device or itself in an emergency. It is only used as a backup deployment device.

Funny thing is its all mandatory safety kit and you cant jump without it hahahaha

I love rules .... there so silly

Wear a condom .... right :)
 
we've had to do the water testing for over 10 years, plus after every strong wind we have stand by each tree to check it's still safe. before I left, I spent most of my day doing things like this and not the job I was employed too do. (Local gov.):cuckoo:
 
indiabravo said:
Ha ha, and the warning on all packets of nuts saying that "this product may contain nuts".... well I hope so, thats why I bought them!
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that's just laziness for "may contain traces of other types of nut"

a lot of H&S is just common sense taken to exponentially stupid extremes
 
It's beyond a joke now. The people who come up with these stupid ideas should be sacked. Yes, h&s is important when there is serious risk, but not changing plugs or lightbulbs?
 
indiabravo said:
Thats the way things are going unfortunately. If a light bulb blows at my fathers work, he has to phone a man to come from 38 miles away just to replace it!! 76 mile round trip for a few seconds work that anyone is capable of.
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Same with us for some of the chillers! :cuckoo:
 
In my last job in a large sawmill, where we had a large wood chipper behind a fence. The gate in the fence had a zero speed lock which meant that the gate could not be opened till the chipper had come to stop.
Along comes sweeper up (who was going out to a party) & climbs a 6ft high fence to sweep out round the cjipper while it was still running at full speed. He pushed brush under the chipper where it was caught by the feed roller. It spun him round & broke his arm.
This went to court where he won his case!
The reason. HSE said there should have been a notice saying 'Do not climb over the fence'.
 
sawman said:
In my last job in a large sawmill, where we had a large wood chipper behind a fence. The gate in the fence had a zero speed lock which meant that the gate could not be opened till the chipper had come to stop.
Along comes sweeper up (who was going out to a party) & climbs a 6ft high fence to sweep out round the cjipper while it was still running at full speed. He pushed brush under the chipper where it was caught by the feed roller. It spun him round & broke his arm.
This went to court where he won his case!
The reason. HSE said there should have been a notice saying 'Do not climb over the fence'.
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It really is sad. Decent people are losing their jobs over someone elses blatant stupidity like that.

I think the whole lawsuit and H&S thing started of in the USA when a woman sued McDonalds after she spilled a coffee over herself and burned her leg. I'm sure she would have complained if her coffee was cold tho!

Stupid
 
We had a H&S lady visit my workplace a couple of years back. The only thing she could comment on was that the screen on the laptop was not high enough. Now I'm a qualified (but no longer working as) dispensing optician, and one of the things I was particularly keen on was the position of VDUs. I argued with her vociferously on the correct positioning of a VDU - she insisting that the centre of the screen be at eye level, me trying to explain that various muscles in the eyes which work together meant that at a normal reading distance the centre of the VDU should be below eye level. She was insistent that H&S advice was as she said, so I looked it up and guess what - it is recommended that the TOP of the screen should be at eye level. QED.
 
gman said:
I can't believe nobody has mentioned the dirty word yet?.....risk assessment :|
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Perzactly!

If the hotel that I'd stayed in had carried out proper risk assessment and didn't have a broken shower temperature control this wouldn't have happened:

Burns.jpg


approx 2 seconds under full Hot setting.

Anyone else want to complain about H&S at work?
 
To be fair though to HSE.
I was shadowed by one of their inspectors one day a week for 4 months. This was in my timber harvesting days.
We had some super heated 'debates' & to his credit he did listen, in the end.
Basically what he called a risk assessment, I called common sense.
 
cambsno said:
It's beyond a joke now. The people who come up with these stupid ideas should be sacked. Yes, h&s is important when there is serious risk, but not changing plugs or lightbulbs?
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That's not H&S.... That's "had a trip or fall at work? Want free money? Call Ambulance Chasers - Today!".

Basically the employer is covering their arse by sub-contracting all work out to other companies, and using H&S as a blanket excuse, so they can rely on their insurance covering them if something goes wrong.

However, what they often don't realise, is by doing this they haven't actually got away from their responsibilities to provide a safe working environment, and can still be prosecuted by the Heath & Safety Executive. (do not confuse the HSE with spurious claims of H&S gone mad, despite what you might read in the tabloids...)


Best Health & Safety I've encountered had to be at the royal wedding though - "Wear a hi-vis jacket on the roof, or you'll be shot (no, really!)". Because terrorists would never think to wear a hi-vis to blend in, would they...?:cuckoo:
 
Splog said:
Legionella is not found in hot water systems that provide hot water via a tap. It can be found in shower heads though.
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It can be found in hot water systems that have stored hot water (non combi systems) if the stored hot water is below 60C.
Shower heads can be a problem as they are usually around 40C.
 
as a lecturer I have to submit a risk assessment for every single activity I do..... no one has ever trained me in writing a risk assessment and suprisingly no one ever looks at the risk assessments produced.

apparently we used to have a milling machine at work (we still do....) however it did not have the required guards so health and safety condemmed it, it cost more to move the machine out of the way into storage than it would have done to fit guards... meaning if you need to remove metal you ahve to use an angle grinder rather than the correct tool for the job....
 
whitewash said:
as a lecturer I have to submit a risk assessment for every single activity I do..... no one has ever trained me in writing a risk assessment and suprisingly no one ever looks at the risk assessments produced.
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you are surprised no body reads them? I put funny words in or odd phrases to see if anyone comes up and says "so what does 'promulgulate' mean". I've slipped-in a detailed assesement of the risk of getting a paper-cut from reading the RA, or the need to wear steel toe-caps in case you drop the RA on your foot.... but sadly, nobody ever reads them and notices...

RA are a legal arse-covering exercise, which mostly fails at arse-covering because there's no oversight or double-checking... 99% of the time they boil down to "is everyone doing their job properly, and not being an idiot". There is an aspect of "xxx is too dangerous, do something else instead", but again that activity wouldn't happen if someone knew what they were doing, and if they didn't know what they were doing they wouldn't know how to have drawn up a RA to spot that danger in the first place...its all very circular...
 
I used to test saftey bolts on commercial buildings in Edinburgh, whilst working on the bolts in the HSE offices in the town we attatched the dummy weight to the bolt with 2 ropes and watched in delight as it pulled both bolts from the stone and fell 3 storys. It seems they had taken the cheap option when getting them fitted and got the cowboys in :lol:, we condemed the whole lot and left them with very red faces.
 
health and safety is always a joke till you get hurt because it wasnt adhered to properly ...........
 
paulyoung666 said:
health and safety is always a joke till you get hurt because it wasnt adhered to properly ...........
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So putting 'Contains Nuts' on a bag of peanuts is sensible then, or as has just been posted "this toaster may get hot'??
 
cambsno said:
So putting 'Contains Nuts' on a bag of peanuts is sensible then, or as has just been posted "this toaster may get hot'??
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putting "contains nuts" is not health & safety though... its arse-covering.

H&S would be "do not open 3000 packets of nuts, sprinkle contents across the floor, then go for a run". But you don't need to state that... however, if you did that bizarre act in your workplce, you could be prosecuted under the Health & Safety at Work Act.

H&S can be blamed for people being prevented to climb on top of things at work...which at first glance seems daft, but an awful lot of people fall off ladders and office chairs every year and end up in hospital...

I'm surprised noone has mentioned euro-sausages yet... or other myths...
 
cambsno said:
So putting 'Contains Nuts' on a bag of peanuts is sensible then, or as has just been posted "this toaster may get hot'??
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Strictly speaking peanuts are not actually nuts but legumes .... ;)
 
I had a new Sky dish fitted recently. The installer said he would have to drill a hole in the outside wall as a health and safety measure in order to tether and secure the ladder. He also advised me that he would not use the tether but that he would have to drill the hole regardless as he was on probation, his work would be checked and the hole must be present. I protested that this was stupid but he said "No hole, no dish.". So I gave him the go ahead. He shot up the ladder like a rat up a drainpipe and once the install was complete he went back to drill the hole.

He didn't give two hoots about his own safety (not that I imagine there was any real risk beyond that faced daily by window cleaners), only making sure he could get his tick in the box to pass his probation. So I've had my wall spoiled for no useful reason and he has not benefited one jot from the H&S regs. Any stats collected are a sham. Nobody wins. It's farcical.

BTW, his mate was having a real problem trying to connect the digital optical cable to the output from the HD box. After watching him struggle for a while he said he'd have to go and get an adapter. I asked if I could have a look first, suspecting the obvious, and sure enough the dust plug was still in the back of the box. Holy frack! It must come to something when customers know more about the gear being installed than the "trained" installers. :shake:
 
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