Browsing: Equipment and plant | Page 7

The authors of an Australian study say they have added to "reassuring" findings around the possible cancer links to highly prevalent occupational exposures to electrical fields and the use of electrical appliances.

• Company charged with endangering customers, after fatality;
  
• Inspectors issue hundreds of WHS notices in three-day blitz; and
  
• WHS resources for new audiometric duties in NSW released.

An employer's commitment to spending nearly $1 million on safety undertakings, including piloting a drone program to eliminate fall-from-height risks, is the "preferred enforcement option" over a worker's four-metre fall, a regulator has revealed.

A commission has agreed with an employer that the seriousness of unsafe conduct isn't assessed by reference to injury or damage but the risk created, but overturned its dismissal of a worker for a driving incident it mischaracterised as highly serious.

• SWA agrees to push for low exposure limit for common carcinogen;
  
• SWA makes hundreds of changes to chemical info system;
  
• WHS guides for pre-2004 buildings and roll-aways released; and
  
• Dreamworld-inspired WHS Code made in Qld.

A PCBU's failure to risk assess how its work interacted with neighbouring properties, public access areas and obstructions, posed "extreme" harm to others, a court has found in convicting and fining it $300,000.

• Director and manager face jail over arm amputation; and
  
• Safe-rates provisions included in Bill that increases WHS penalties.

A dangerous machine's "confusing" control panel, combined with inadequate high- and low-order safety controls, contributed to the crush death of a worker that initiated a string of (ultimately unsuccessful) prosecutions, a coronial inquest has found.

All of Australia's eight harmonised WHS jurisdictions have now formally applied or committed to adopting provisions explicitly requiring PCBUs to manage psychosocial risks through a risk management process.

An electricity company has spent nearly $14 million on a safety overhaul, and committed a further $1 million to safety undertakings to avoid prosecution over an electric-shock incident that occurred just months before one of its workers died in similar circumstances.