INSTITUTION OF OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH

Minute of the 111^th Meeting of the Edinburgh Branch

C E White R Lovering R McLean S Smith D Boyd   S Boucher J Cowan J Craig R Mitchell A Whyte   K L Lloyd A McCartney I O’Neill J Berry C Forrest   I M Murray R Wilson A Brown J McCraith J Smith %nbsp; J Conway G Lyall B Cameron S Page M Bancroft   R Atkinson G McNab D A Brown L Young R Brownlie   E Sneddon B Pill R Paterson A R Green J Adamson   W Witherspoon I Craig B Davies N Doherty L Tring   O Osborn G Sharp M Johnstone M Batho H Fraser Wood

Plus Visitors and Guests

S Ashton K Wilson R W Bertram R Innes D Gladwin

1.0 CHAIRMAN K L Lloyd

The Chair was taken by K Lloyd. Welcome was extended to all, particularly new Members

and Guests. The Millennium celebrations and the Best Wishes for the New Year were offered and the strength of membership numbers after the holiday break was pleasing and reassuring.

2.0 MINUTES

The 110^th Minute – December 1999 – was tabled Members were reminded of the importance of signing the Sederunt should CPD pints be required. The Minute was proposed by J McCraith and seconded by R McLean as a true and accurate record.

3.0 MATTERS ARISING

• Item Number 4.6 – Job Spot. The Chairman mentioned the advertisement for a job within his own organisation and explained the reason for not including within the Branch Minute.
• Item Number 7.1.1 – District Forming. A letter and questionnaire has been prepared and will be circulated to the full Branch Membership with this Minute. It was stressed that a No Return would be treated as a ‘Negative’ vote and that there is a positive need for names of members willing to play an active part before the forming of a District can be undertaken. Please return your tear off portion as it is important.

4.0 CORRESPONDENCE

1. Letters – A Levinson. A thank you note from last months Guest Speaker
2. Fax – R W Bertram. Apologies
3. Membership. Detail of the current membership was detailed with the Branch having 756 Members out of a total Institution membership of just short of 25,000
4. The Grange – Jane Grist. Requesting information about future Branch events

Copies of all the above mentioned correspondence was made available for the Members present. Further information is available upon request from the Secretary.

5.0 BRANCH EDUCATION OFFICER L Young

6.0 SPECIALIST GROUPS

6.1 MAPS CO-ORDINATOR M Johnstone

6.2 CONSTRUCTION C E White

The next meeting of this Group will be 01 February and members wishing items to be taken for discussion should send them to the Secretary at an early opportunity.

The use of an extension to the Spandeck as leading edge protection was stated to have excessive gaps, which could render the arrangement unsafe.

6.3 HEALTH and ENVIRONMENTAL R Lovering

7.0 MEMBERS ITEMS

• Retrieval scheme. A request was made for information regarding a list of address for places where surplus LPG cylinders could be returned. A number of avenues were suggested but any positive list would be appreciated by the Secretary for forwarding.
• Poor Work Places. It was mentioned on the national news by Alan Sefton that many thousands of days were being lost through unsafe places of work. Watch for the report within the local press.
• RoSPA. There will be a National meeting of RoSPA with a member attending. The information indicates that the next incentive will be attempts to revitalise health and safety with March and April seeing a drive by the HSE to improve Consultation processes between employers and employees. Possibly giving the power of Prohibition to safety representatives.
• Drugs and Alcohol Policy. A member is putting together a new policy and would be grateful of any assistance from anyone having recently undergone a similar exercise. Helpers to the Secretary please.
• First Aider Payment. Do Companies pay their employees when they are given additional responsibility under the Health & Safety (First Aid) Regulations 1981. If so how much and should they be index linked?
• Tech SP Up-grades. The Chairman made presentation to M Scott-Smith and congratulated him on his achievement of up-grading his membership. Mention was made that T Boyd was also presented with his Certificate but not at the meeting and by the Secretary.

8.0 GUEST SPEAKER

The Guest Speaker was introduced by M Johnstone as Sheila Groat from IOM and was invited to address the Members and explain the format for the presentation.

IOSH Paper Presented 13th January 2000

by Sheila Grout, Brian Cherry & Liz Sneddon all of IOM - being a triple workshop on Dust/Solvents/Asbestos monitoring

Sheila Grout opened the session by giving basic instruction in the intended timetable for the afternoon's events. The intention was to divide the assembled body into three nominally equalized groups - one individual would tasked as 'Timekeeper' for the group and they were to be responsible for ensuring that each group were to move on from their current workshop after 15 minutes had elapsed Sheila then indicated that the three workshops were aimed at providing details of practical sampling arrangements for each of the three chosen topics -

* Dust - Respirable dusts can serious effect the health of those exposed to them and the first workshop was intended to show what kit can be used to gain details of the levels which the employees are exposed to

* Solvents - The HSE have previously stated that some 5 million employees at work are exposed to solvents during the working day and whilst

the effects may vary from no apparent effect, through dermatitis, to narcosis and the kit on show could put exposure figures to the levels being endured. However Sheila also pointed out that the excessively high concentrations which could suffered by some persons at work where they were exposed to concentrations of '000s of PPM may not reach short term exposure limits and can prove difficult to define.

* Asbestos - This workshop would be a further development of the paper presented by Liz in September of last year and had examples of various forms of asbestos and a microscope with fibres on a slide for examination.

Workshops

At this stage the group was divided into three groups and each spent time at each of the workshop stations in turn.

Asbestos work-station

Here there were samples of various asbestos products (sealed in suitable plastic containers) for the members to examine. These ranged from the basic ore used to create the final product through to samples of: -

* Blue chrysotile fibres, where a dye had actually been put into the fibres having an adverse effect on the final product

* Limpet fibre which had been taken off a beam. The point was made that whilst limpet fibres may be removed relatively easily from the beams to which they were originally sprayed, there still remained the problem of over-spray from the original installation.

* Asbestos backed linoleum, where the problems tended to arise more when the linoleum was removed as it left asbestos on the floor. The are known cases where the asbestos has been left in the form of dusts in cracks between floorboards and other instances where diligent polishing and buffing of a linoleum floor has resulted in the release into the atmosphere of loose

asbestos fibres.

* Asbestos furnace gloves, manufactured from a loose woven fabric

* Asbestos bandage, also of a loose woven form.

* Fibreglass insulation sample. This showed one of the simple identification systems used in defining asbestos as opposed to fibre-glass = this being its colour, being yellow right through, whereas if asbestos fibre is broken it is often bright white inside. The other form of easy identification being the basic feel of the product = asbestos is often soft whereas fibreglass 'crunches' in your fingers if squeezed.

There were also a range of photographs on show of asbestos debris, various products in the form of panels/ rope/ pipe/ fire protection and even an elegant flower pot made entirely out of asbestos fibre.

A microscope had a slide set under the lens to show just what asbestos fibres looked like.

Liz also re-emphasised a point made during her presentation of past September - if asbestos is in good order – leave alone.

Solvent work-station

The session at this workstation started with a slide presentation on a computer aimed at providing a basic introduction to the topic to enable questions on solvent monitoring systems to be dealt with by Brian. The solvents and gases considered in particular were: -

* Isocyanates - particularly pertinent nowadays from 2 pack paint systems and foam manufacturing although the MELs are very low for this product, this was not a problem as it was relatively easy to detect and measure.

* Resins - in particular those from rosin based soldering operations.

In general it was quoted that if there was a 'haze' around the operation there was likely to be an exposure problem.

* Formaldehyde - as released from chipboard often after cold spells when the contents of porta-cabins were heated. It was also a potential for harm during machining of MDF products.

* Details were also given during the slide show of Gluteraldehyde, Organic solvents and adhesives.

Various sampling systems were on display including: -

* Dragger hand-pump - which is only useful as a single shot indicator. It does not give any time-weighted indication of exposure and hence has limited application particularly when it can suffer from cross interference from none related substances.

* Direct reading instruments - where an instantaneous reading is presented at the time.

* Pumped sample - where a measured amount of air is drawn through a tube of activated charcoal/ Silica gel/Amberlite resin for later analysis via either photo-ionising or infra-red analysis or other laboratory system.

* Absorber samples - 3M/Drager/SKC being examples of systems where a long-term exposure was possible without the use of pumping devices as they worked via diffuser sampling. There was a word of caution however on the risks of cross contamination and for that reason in particular never use felt tipped pens to mark samples etc.

Dust workstation

The basic system for gaining dust samples being similar to that used for gaining solvent sampling - by use of pump drawing air though in this case a filter which will capture the dust particles.

* Absorber samples - 3M/Drager/SKC being examples of systems where a long-term exposure was possible without the use of pumping devices as they worked via diffuser sampling. There was a word of caution however on the risks of cross contamination and for that reason in particular never use

felt tipped pens to mark samples etc.

Pharmaceutical Companies often have to set there own standard a the HSE do not have defined exposure standards for their products and they are typical of a number of Companies who are now purchasing and using their own kit to ensure they have adequate records of exposure levels. The ready availability of the kit to take regular reading is important as the levels can vary widely from day to day and even from hour to hour. Records of what activities were being undertaken and how are necessary to enable complete description of why there are variations in the exposure levels gained. Consideration of the type of head fitted to the pump, where it is located within the breathing zone and any specific unusual feature of the events all need to be recorded. Typically for example a monitoring head should be fitted to the spectacles where monitoring the levels of exposure from a soldering activity, where the employee has to bend over the task to see what they are doing.

Pumps can vary in price from about £200 to £600 depending on the capacity and range of pumping rates, which they cover. An instantaneous reading meter from dust readings was on show and although expensive its benefits were fairly obvious when compared to the normal system of having to remove filter papers. - weigh them. - leave them to stabilise. - weigh them again. - etc. making the results possible delayed by some two or three days.

A Tyndall beam unit was also on show and its use in visually illustrating the existence of dust and possible non-capture by extraction systems was demonstrated by use of a dusty chair.

One other instantaneous readout instrument was also on show - it providing details of CO, CO2, Temperature and Relative humidity in one screen was felt to be invaluable when checking conditions for possible sick building syndrome.

Summary

The group then reconvened in order for question time following which a token gift was presented to each of the three workshop presenters.

The Chairman voiced a Vote of Thanks and a small token of the Members appreciation was offered – the members responded warmly.

9.0 DATE OF NEXT MEETING

Members were reminded that the next meeting had been set at:

With the topic being

Mr P Gotch, Group Health & Safety Advisor. Babtie

10.0 CLOSURE

The Chairman thanked all for their attendance and contribution and bade them a safe journey homeward; then closed the meting with the invitation to have tea and then mingle.

C E WHITE FIOSH RSP Branch Secretary     K L LLOYD MIOSH RSP Branch Chairman