Author:brian-darlington

The importance of following the rules can never be overstressed – especially when you risk a pulmonary embolism, are sitting on the sea bed with manta rays, or conducting your everyday work Throughout my years as a safety and health professional, it has alarmed me to know how many employees and/or contractors work in unsafe ways. It’s unbelievable, but true. They either enter machinery without isolating and locking out, or without overriding the interlocking devices, or they work without the […]

Safety is not a sport, and all sporting disciplines are not safe. Nevertheless, we can and should take safety principles from sport into the workplace, to guide our approach to safety in industry. Let’s take a closer look at one of the fastest sports in the world – Formula One racing. Formula One racing is one of the highest-risk sports, with many drivers having been killed and others seriously injured over the years. Some of the more prominent accidents include […]

Occupational health – simply injuries on a different timeline. I recently watched a documentary about sulphur mining on an Indonesian island off East Java. On this island, day after day locals enter the edge of an active volcano, Mount Ijen, to mine solidified sulphur. There is a captive market, with the sulphur being sold and used in the manufacture of explosives, cosmetics, firelighters and bleaching activities. The sulphur is, therefore, a valuable resource to the people of the island. The […]

In the last issue we discussed the fact that, just as in the military, good leadership in business is important to ensure that employees and contractors return home safely at the end of each day. In both cases it is the leaders who are responsible for the safety of their teams. In the military environment there are no safety professionals in the combat forces, because it is not practical and, more importantly, there is a clear understanding that the various […]