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THIS YEAR"S EUROPEAN WEEK OF Safety and Health at Work will concentrate on noise at work. It is estimated that 170,000 people in the UK suffer deafness, tinnitus or other ear conditions as a result of excessive noise at work. Manufacturing and construction, as well as farms, transport, mines and quarries are particularly affected by the problem which may occur in all sorts of other workplaces. The campaign is backed by the ETUC and the British TUC as well as by EU Commisioner for Employment Vladimir Špidla. He drew attention to the new European directive, which will come into force next year, limiting the noise level at work to 87 decibels.
The logo for this year's Euro Health & Safety week
You can get involved by signing the charter, nominating good examples of handling the problem for an award or inspecting your own workplace. The week is being co-ordinated in the UK by the Health and Safety Executive and materials for the campaign can be downloaded form their web site as well as from that of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work.
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IN ONE OF THE OCCASIONAL unexpected instances of apparently mundane EU legislation hitting national headlines, the proposed directive on optical radiation (see issue 29) was amended by the European Parliament after extensive comment by the popular press in both the UK and Germany. The last of the so-called 'physical agents' directives had been approved by the Council of Ministers with the aim of protecting workers who use lasers or welding equipment in such industries as steel, glass and tanning. However by including natural radiation the Council set the stage for a heated debate in the Parliament. With newspapers concerned about the amount of clothing that builders and barmaids would be 'forced' to wear to protect them from sunlight some MEPs were determined to leave such matters to national governments. 'It is no business of the EU to tell workers that they can't be bare-chested or wear shorts' according to Liz Lynne of the Liberal group ALDE. By contrast socialist members such as Stephen Hughes of the PES group cited the rising incidence of skin cancer as cause for regulation and condemned the 'cynical campaign' by Eurosceptic media and right-wing politicians 'hell-bent on misrepresenting important health and safety regulation'.
In the end, by a vote of 397 to 260, natural radiation was excluded from the guidelines on exposure and duties on employers to assess risk, reduce exposure and undertake health surveillance. Now, unless the Council of Ministers puts it back into the directive 'outdoor workers have a genuine reason to get hot under the collar' in the words of TUC head of safety Hugh Robertson.
The temporary ban on phthalates, substances used to soften articles used by young children such as teething rings and soft toys, has been made permanent. Brought in as an emergency measure in 1999 after an EU scientific committee warned of risks to the liver, kidneys and testicles, the ban had to be separately renewed each year by each Member State. Now the Council of Ministers has joined the European Parliament in approving it, the prohibition on the use of six substances should come into force in the autumn. Markos Kyprianou, European Commissioner for health and consumer protection, commented: 'Europeans expect all products sold on the EU's internal market to be safe, but this is particularly the case for toys and childcare products. Toxic chemicals have no place in children's toys. Our action on phthalates shows that when a risk is identified, the EU can act effectively to protect the health of its children'.
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