The multifaceted, complex and widely misunderstood concept of “risk” has fascinated me for many years, dating back at least to the late 1980s in North America when I began my involvement in ecological and human health risk assessments projects. At that time, I was introduced to terms such as “voluntary” vs “involuntary” risk, “natural” vs […]
Category Archives: Worker Safety
Fakes and Worker Health and Safety – A Hidden Killer!
We are likely all aware of reports that off-spec, counterfeit and inferior quality medicines are being sold to developing countries (if not check out this article by Newton et al for a good overview of the problem). We have also probably read reports of certain pesticides, which are not permitted for use in industrialized countries, […]
H&S, OHS, HSE, HSSE, HSSEQ, HSSEQ/CSR … Alphabet Soupization
In the 1970s, back when I was in high school/university and working summer jobs in Canada at construction sites and lumber yards, I do not remember ever running across a safety officer or in fact any sort of HSE professional at the job site.In the early 1980s, I worked as an environmental scientist and had […]
The HSE “Professional’s” Dirty Secret – Fake Credentials and Certifications
This topic was suggested to me by a blog reader, M.F., an HSE trainer from a country in South Asia, who commented on the dismal state of HSE in his country:“Organisations state that they are adopting HSE but in reality they don’t have HSE departments in their organisations. Secondly, most of the consultants or institutes […]
How to Carry Out Your Own HSE Compliance Audit
In the last blog post, I discussed the process of developing a simple HSE Legal Register. We will continue that discussion to the obvious next step; that is, developing a simple system to assist in complying with the legislative requirements imposed on your business.To be clear, in this blog post I am not discussing compliance […]