The Health and Safety Executive campaign #WorkRight is 'Helping Great Britain Work Well' and raising awareness to H&S issues to make sure your workers #GoHomeHealthy. As a business which is part of the Absolent Group, we provide a range of products and services to keep air clean in industrial workspaces.

We also have the same commitment to our own workforce and we are supporting the #workright and #dustbuster campaigns across all of our sites by making sure we have the correct dust, fume and oil mist extraction and containment equipment installed.

For industries such as: construction materials manufacturing, metals processing, woodworking, food manufacturing and quarrying there is a high risk to employees when it comes to the risk of life-threatening lung disease caused by exposure to airborne contaminants. In fact, the HSE estimates that 12,000 lung disease deaths in the UK each year can be linked to past exposures to contaminants at work.

Our companies manufacture dust control equipment, oil mist collectors and fume extraction equipment to help a wide range of businesses meet Workplace Exposure Limit legislation. The HSE sets a long-term Workplace Exposure Limit for a number of hazardous substances and breaching of these standards can result in severe penalties, loss of productivity due to employee sickness and even legal action. For small or large business in these high risk industries, looking after employees’ health by reducing dust and fume exposure is vitally important.

Statistics for 2017 to 2018 (source HSE)

•    Fatal injuries at work = 144
•    Workers suffering from a work-related illness = 4 million
•    Workers suffering from a work-related injury = 555,000
•    Working days lost, due to work-related illness and injury = 7 million
•    Businesses or people prosecuted that resulted in a conviction for failing in their health and safety duty = 493

Prevent Explosions

Many dusts such as flour, sugar, starch, sawdust and many powdered metals also have the potential to explode by creating a ‘dust cloud’. When this cloud is suspended and mixed with air and exposed to an ignition source it can cause catastrophic, even fatal, explosions.

You can take steps to reduce explosive hazards. Look at where you position equipment and ensure there are no leakage points around handling systems that produce dust. Also, install the correct Dust Extraction equipment, built to the correct ATEX rated standard. Visit Dustcheck’s website to find out more.

Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres Regulations (DSEAR) also requires that hazardous area classifications for flammable dusts should be undertaken in the same manner as that for flammable gases and vapours.