Posts Tagged ‘UKAS Accredited Asbestos Inspection Bodies’
Asbestos linked to early death of ship engineer
AN engineer who was exposed to asbestos while working at a shipbuilding yard died from industrial disease. Former Rolls-Royce worker Harry Rigby recalled blowing asbestos dust from his overalls while working in the 1950s at Cammell Laird, Birkenhead, before he moved to Derby.
In a statement read out at Derby and South Derbyshire Coroner’s Court, he recalled seeing blue, white and brown asbestos in the air while he worked close to asbestos-lagged pipes. Mr Rigby, of Breaston, started to feel breathless in early 2008, struggling to tend to his garden and do odd jobs around the house.
He was diagnosed with pleural plaques – a form of asbestosis – in October 2008 and died at the Royal Derby Hospital, aged 71, last month.
In 2008, as part of a successful compensation claim before his death, Mr Rigby, of Holly Avenue, was examined by respiratory physician Dr David Baldwin.
In it he said: “Over the last 12 months my breathing has become gradually worse. I am now unable to walk 100 yards without having to stop and I have to rest after climbing one flight of steps.
“I worked from 1955 to 1960 as an apprentice engineer at Cammell Laird. The pipes were lagged in asbestos and I would see the blue, white and brown dust. I would use the air lines to blow the dust off me and my overalls.”
Mr Rigby carried on working at Cammell Laird, away from the pipework, until 1975 when he moved to Derby and took up a role as an electrical design engineer at Rolls-Royce. He still worked on ships, but said any exposure to asbestos would have been “minimal.” Read More
BOHS announces the closure of ABICS
The British Occupational Hygiene Society [BOHS] announced the closure of the Asbestos Building Inspectors Certification Scheme [ABICS] last week. This means that individual surveyors who don’t work for UKAS accredited organisations, can no longer demonstrate competence, as recommended in HSE’s guidance HSG 264: Asbestos, the Survey Guide.
The following is from the BOHS Press Release:
Steve Perkins, Chief Executive of BOHS, states, “Despite the support of the Health and Safety Executive [HSE], the cooperation with UKAS, and the high level of initial interest from individual surveyors that ABICS has always generated, we have come to the conclusion – after eight years of significant and unsustainable investment – that a voluntary certification scheme is not viable in the extremely competitive environment of asbestos surveying.”
It was recognised many years ago that there are individual asbestos surveyors who are competent but who operate as sole traders or in small companies outside UKAS accredited organisations, and who are not likely to apply for UKAS accreditation for commercial reasons. The concept of personal certification was developed out of recognition of this need, and ABICS finally achieved UKAS accreditation as a personal certification scheme in February 2009, launching as a cost-effective alternative to company accreditation for individuals and smaller companies.
At BOHS we remain committed to the control of exposure to asbestos at work and in the community, and we maintain our original position, behind the decision to develop ABICS in the first place, that competence is key in this particular sector where lives can be put at risk through incompetence. It is estimated that there are between half a million and a million non-domestic properties which still contain asbestos, and there is an increasing requirement for the more invasive refurbishment/demolition surveys which are particularly demanding. In the worst case scenarios, incompetent surveying can and does result in uncontrolled exposure to asbestos if a tradesperson disturbs a material they wrongly believe to be free of asbestos: there are some 4,000 asbestos related deaths annually in the UK, with the greatest occupational risk for tradespeople, such as electricians, plumbers and joiners, etc. Read More
Asbestos Survey – Interserve fined for exposing MoD staff to asbestos
Court fines firm £33k after it failed to follow advice of an asbestos survey at an MoD base
Interserve has been fined £33,000 after a court heard it had potentially exposed Ministry of Defence workers to deadly asbestos fibres.
Its subsidiary Interserve (Defence) Ltd, of Waterloo Road, London, appeared at Oxford Crown Court on 8 September following an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive.
An asbestos survey undertaken in the boiler room at an MoD base in Arncott, Bicester, in early 2005, found that the whole room was considered to be contaminated with asbestos and recommended that access to the room should be restricted until it was removed. Read More
Asbestos Surveys – Crown Censure for Ministry of Defence
The Ministry of Defence (MOD) today received a formal Crown Censure from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after potentially exposing workers to deadly asbestos fibres.
Being a Crown body, MOD cannot be prosecuted as a private company would be in the criminal courts. The Censure was received by a senior manager from Defence Estates on behalf of MOD, who attended a formal Crown Censure hearing at HSE’s East Grinstead Office today (13 September 2010).
Defence Estates is an operating arm of the MOD and is responsible for managing the military estate – including managing asbestos on the estate. Read More