As the rugby world cup has kicked off this week, your attention may not be 100% on health and safety. You may have known that they have changed the "law" for the rugby scrum and now has a "crouch, bind, set" instructions - this change alone has reduced accidents and injury in the scrum by 50%. But unfortunately not all companies this week have changed their procedures to keep their players (employees) or even their customers safe:

Keeping with the rugby theme, A restarant in Rugby was fined thousands of pounds for having mold growing on the kitchen walls, keeping utensils on the floor and more hygine issues. The restaurant was issued a health and safty warning with an outline of the improvements needed to ensure that the restaurant wasnt closed down. However, when the health and safety officers revisited the kitchen they were shocked to see that instead of improving it had infact deteriorated, there was no hot water in the hand wash basin, a hole in the kitchen door and food waste out to the rear of the kitchen. The owner was fined a total of £3,500 and ordered to pay £913.57 in costs. You can read more of the stroy here. 

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A director of a zoo has appeared in court due to a string of health and safety breeches after a Sumatran tiger mauled and killed one of its keepers. It is said that the zoo director has failed to act on the previous notices to make improvements to his health and safety, not only for is employees but for people not in his employment to ensure their safety when visiting his park. Notices were sent after a tragic accident where a zoo keeper fell from a ladder while preparing food for the large cats last year. The case will be in the courts in October. 

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A bricklayer tragically lost his life this week after a wall collapsed and fell on top of him. The building contractors who had been working on building a 3 bedroom house and a storage room in the garden, the storeroom was planned to be built next to a wall that was built a year previous, however the wall was not built as a retaining wall, and when the ground was being levelled the soil that was supporting the wall collapsed.   The company failed to complete the correct health and safety checks on the wall and did not put in place structural support to prevent this accident from happening. The company has now been fined £200,000. You can read more on this story here. 

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A polythene firm has been fined a total of £50,000 following serious safety breeches which has left an employee with life changing injuries after they got trapped in a machine. The business was charged for breaching the provision and use of work equipment regulations and the management of health and safety at work regulations. For these two breeches the company pleaded guilty and was fined a total of £40,000. They were also ordered to pay a total of £10,000 for costs. to read more about this story click here. 

It was reported that yesterday at a lorry tipped over when traveling along a busy road in wales. As expected the contents of the lorry spilt over the road and caused traffic congestion until pasts 8pm last night.

This lorry was transporting sodium hypochlorite, a chemical which is commonly used as a bleaching agent or in your everyday, household, disinfectant. Sodium hypochlorite is highly dangerous chemical, which omits sodium oxide and chlorine gasses and can cause incredible damage to the environment and humans if ingested or inhaled, due to the nature of this chemical it is classified as a Class 8 corrosive Hazardous chemical.

Luckily no one was hurt in this accident but it did trigger us here at Label Source to think about our own range of Hazardous chemical labels.

Hazard warning labels are there to protect people who are to come into contact with the substance, say if there is an accident the emergency services will know how to respond to the substance to help protect everyone involved and themselves.

When transporting hazardous chemicals you are required to display hazard diamonds on the harmful substances.  These hazardous have a different classification and so require different labels.

  Class 1:  Explosive substances and articles, with sub-categories ranging from 1.1 (mass explosion hazard) through to class 1.6 (extremely insensitive substances).

Class 2: Gasses  (including compressed gas, liquefied gas, refrigerated liquefied gas, dissolved gas, aerosol dispensers containing gas,  and other articles containing gas under pressure and non-pressurised gas).

Class 3 : Flammable Liquids

Class 4.1 : Flammable Solids

Class 4.2 : Substances liable to spontaneous combustion  (including pyrophoric substances, mixtures and solutions - liquid or solid - and self-heating substances) 

Class 5.1 - Oxidizing substances, solid or liquid, either self-heating, or emitting flammable gases on contact with water.

Class 5.2 : Organic peroxides. Substances which decompose at normal or elevated temperatures, or heat up on contact with impurities (acids, amines etc), friction or impact, and release harmful or flammable gases and vapours.

Class 6.1 - Toxic substances that cause damage to human health, or death by inhalation, body absorption or by ingestion.

Class 6.2 - Infectious substances that contain pathogens (bacteria’s, viruses, parasites or fungi) leading to disease in humans or animals.

Class 7 - Radioactive material containing radionuclides above permissible levels.

Class 8 - Corrosive substances where skin or mucous membrane is attacked by chemical action, or where goods are damaged or destroyed through leakage

Class 9 - Miscellaneous dangers not covered by the above. This includes: fine dust hazards (asbestos fibres); substances which form dioxins in the event of fire (PCBs); environmentally hazardous materials; substances emitting flammable vapours; lithium batteries; and lifesaving appliances.

Transporting chemicals is a dangerous activity so it is important that you follow the correct safety regulations in case an accident does occur. To ensure that everyone knows about the risk that is involved the hazardous substances have to be labelled on the outside of the carrier, on the substance container and if the substance is in its own packaging on the outside of the packaging, so the hazard is highly visible for all.

You can view our full range of Hazardous Chemical Labels here. If you do have any questions or in the unlikely event that you cannot find the label you are looking for, feel free to contact us by email on info@labelsource.co.uk.

Asset tracking is essential to companies who have IT equipment, valuable goods and hardware. These assets generally require significant capital investment and extensive maintenance cost to your business.

Asset tags are primarily for managing and reconciling ownership of the company’s asset as well as recording the location of the asset. Asset tags can be attached to both fixed assets and movable assets - these are items that hold value for the company. Asset tags can also help you track the life of the asset, this is useful to know when the asset will need to need to serviced or replaced and will help prevent major equipment downtime.

Asset tagging also addresses issues that many companies may experience such as;

• Theft of assets: Theft is a huge cost risk to businesses, and asset tagging will help identify any assets that have gone missing.
   
• Unauthorised moving of assets: It may be that an asset gets moved from one location to another by mistake; for example, if someone switches PCs in the office.
   
• Ensuring that the right asset is removed and/or repaired: You may find yourself with two assets that look the same and have identical item barcodes, but one asset is of greater worth to your company than another, so it is important remove or repair the correct asset – asset tags will help you identify which asset is which.

Here at Label Source we provide many different asset tags:

The barcode asset tag is a secure, low cost way to report the asset to the inventory or your company’s asset database.

Serial number asset tags are useful if you want to have a unique serial number on your assets, to prevent issues such as the removal of the wrong asset.

Tamper-proof asset tags are used as security tags as these leave a “void” pattern on the tag should the asset be stolen or removed.

To see our full range of asset tags, please head over to our Asset Tagging & Property Identification department.

Manual handling injuries are one of the most common forms of workplace accidents. In 2013/2014 the HSE reported that such injuries were 24% of total reported incidents, and this led to 909,000 lost working days in that period. The type of manual handling injuries included repetitive strain injuries, muscle pulls, sprains and strains, trapped nerves, finger trap wounds, cuts from sharp objects, hernias, upper limb disorders as well as back problems.

Contributory factors involved in leading to such problems involve carrying, pushing or pulling loads result from twisting, stooping or bending, may involve sudden movements, or excessive travel distances, sometimes with inadequate periods for recovery. The loads may be heavy, unbalanced, difficult to grip, or may be sharp, hot or cold.

Other factors which can add to manual handling safety difficulties can include poor workspace layout or working conditions (uneven floors, inadequate lighting or poor ventilation), duration and frequency of lifting action including lengthy time in a fixed posture position, and the condition of awkward loads (such as slippery or unwieldy weights).

While there are high risk industries such as healthcare, construction, agriculture, transport and storage, these lifting actions are commonplace throughout most occupations, although many to a much lesser extent. All industrial sectors must comply with the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 to provide a safe environment for lifting of loads.

Label Source’s range of manual handling signs, notices and labels can assist in drawing attention to good practice to tie in with safe working guidelines, proper on the job training, matching the suitability of the person to the demands of lifting, health screening, job rotation, handling in teams or use of mechanical aids, such as hoists, trolleys, conveyor belts or forklift trucks.

Recently, a survey carried out by IronmongersDirect revealed that many employees would not know what to do if there was a fire at their workplace. Alarmingly, 22% of people said that they would look to see what other people are doing before acting; even more shockingly, 13% of those polled said that they would simply continue with their work and ignore the alarm.

As an employer, the health and safety of your employees is your responsibility. Therefore, it is down to you to put in place and maintain the appropriate safety measures, as well as providing information on what to do in the event of a fire in your workplace. It is a legal requirement to carry out a risk assessment of your premises and review them regularly.

When carrying out a fire risk assessment, you will need to do the following:

1. Identify all potential hazards
2. Identify the people who are at risk (young children, disabled or elderly people)
3. Evaluate all risks
4. Remove or reduce all risks
5. Record your findings
6. Provide training to all members of staff
7. Review periodically to ensure that there are no new risks and that people have not forgotten the correct company fire procedure

As fire speads very quickly, it is important that everybody evacuates the building quickly, safely, and calmly. This means that you need to:

• Provide accessible escape routes, keep them free of obstacles, and mark them clearly
• Use signs to remind employees what to do in the event of a fire
• Provide a designated safe meeting point for your staff
• Clearly mark all fire equipment using the appropriate signage

Here at Label Source, we take fire safety extremely seriously. We have a huge range of emergency access and fire safety signs, including disabled guidance safety signs, access and escape signs, fire equipment safety signs and projecting fire equipment safety signs.

Remember, if your workplace is missing any crucial fire and safety signs, you could face prosecution for breaching health and safety regulations.