The owner of Vauxhall has been fined £150,000 over the death of a long-serving worker who was crushed in machinery at its car factory in Ellesmere Port.
Patients’ safety and wellbeing could be at risk because the working patterns of doctors in training are leaving them too tired and stressed. These are the worrying findings of a recent study commissioned by the General Medical Council (GMC).
The death of a 14-year-old army cadet has led to the Ministry of Defence (MOD) receiving an HSE Crown Censure.
The family of a man who died while taking part in a clinical trial has been awarded an undisclosed amount in compensation, reports Orange News.
Car manufacturer Toyota has agreed to pay compensation to the family of an American couple who died when their Toyota Camry hit a wall, reports the BBC.
Recently published figures have revealed slight falls in a number of key areas of workplace ill-health and injury in Scotland.
Doctors in the UK are to become the first in the world to have regular assessments to ensure that their training and expertise are up-to-date and that they are fit to carry out their roles, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced.
Truro Crown court has heard that an elderly man with dementia was able to wander into another resident's room at his nursing home and fall to his death from a window. Reginald Gibbings, 89, fell 3.6 metres from the room in July 2008.
Dozens of construction sites across Scotland have been put under the spotlight as part of an intensive inspection regime by the Health and Safety Executive.
A Nottinghamshire demolition company and one of its employees have appeared in court after a worker suffered severe injuries when he was hit by a falling excavator bucket on his first day on site.
Plans to introduce legislation to protect people from legal action if they apologise for causing injury are “pointless and misguided” lawyers have said.
Campaigners say a review of workplace safety must ensure that all updates to important guidelines are made in plain English.
The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) has recently launched a new initiative aimed at reducing the number of people injured or killed when working in loading bays.
Government plans to abolish safety inspections in thousands of businesses across the UK will put the health of millions of workers at risk, the TUC has warned.
An independent survey, commissioned by the not-for-profit Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL), has found that almost 40% of people who have suffered a whiplash injury have never claimed compensation for it.
Two nursing home owners have been fined after an elderly resident died following a fall from a hoist.
Two companies have been prosecuted after workers were exposed to potentially deadly asbestos fibres at a mill in Bolton.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) took legal action after finding dozens of damaged asbestos boards stacked up during a visit in October 2010.
Manchester Crown Court heard that neither company had put a plan in place to manage the asbestos in the mill on Tennyson Street, where several small businesses rent units.
HSE became aware of the issue when a contractor on the site raised concerns that asbestos insulation boards had been stripped out of unoccupied floors at the mill, releasing potentially deadly asbestos fibres into the air.
Inspectors issued two Prohibition Notices banning the removal of tools and other items from four floors of the mill in case they had become contaminated with asbestos fibres, and preventing access to the floors.
They also found that asbestos was present in other parts of the mill, occupied by tenants, but nothing had been done to protect it and make sure it was safe.
Asbestos boards were commonly used up until the 1980s to help insulate buildings, to build partition walls and as ceiling tiles. The boards only become dangerous if they are broken up and asbestos fibres are released into the air.
Fibres that are breathed in can become lodged in the lungs or digestive tract, and may lead to lung cancer or other diseases if large numbers of fibres are inhaled. However, symptoms may not appear for several decades.
Around 4,000 people die every year as a result of breathing in asbestos fibres, making it the biggest single cause of work-related deaths in the UK.
A recent study has exposed the distraction and danger to drivers of just having a mobile phone in the car, with a fifth of participants in a simulator situation moving their eyes from the road for more than seven seconds after simply hearing their phone ring.
The simulator study commissioned by esure car insurance reveals that motorists take 23% longer to respond to an unexpected occurrence on the road when trying to send a text message while driving – which equates to the vehicle moving 8.5metres ‘blind’ while driving at 70mph. This lag in reaction times proved larger than the increased reaction times of distractions of arguing children in the backseat (13%) or feeling stressed (4%).
The simulator study further revealed that posting a short status update on, for example facebook - an everyday temptation to those with a smartphone - had various effects in driver performance mainly causing motorists to move across their lane to a greater extent (up to one metre more than in controlled conditions), being less consistent in following distance and driving closer to the vehicle ahead.
These decreases in motoring performance occurred despite drivers slowing down – proving that a reduction in speed does not offset the true dangers of being on a smartphone and the dangers of updating a social networking status.
Two men colluded with each other to commit fraud by falsifying a record stating that a school in Abingdon had been properly cleaned of asbestos.
The "unusual fraud" was confirmed by detective work by one of the men’s employers using GPS tracking technology on the employee’s company van, which proved he had not attended the school when he claimed he had.
The deception by the two men was uncovered after an engineer went to the school to start plumbing work but could see that asbestos material had been left, putting him and others at risk of exposure to dangerous fibres.
He reported it to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which investigated and brought a prosecution against both men.
After the hearing, HSE Inspector Andrew Moore said:
"HSE takes exposure to asbestos very seriously. Currently 4,000 people die every year from asbestos-related disease and the onset of these debilitating diseases can occur many years after exposure. That is why there are clear rules and regulations governing its removal and site decontamination, and that is why HSE will prosecute those who flout the legislation."
The Department of Transport has published statistics on personal injury accidents in the year ending March 2012 on public roads (including footways) in Great Britain.
The statistics show that:
