Every time we go to the bathroom, we are presented with blue signs reminding us to wash our hands.  However, it seems that these signs have become faded into the background and people have started to not notice them, or ignore them all together! Washing your hands after you have been to the bathroom and before you prepare food will kill any viruses you may be carrying and eliminate the risk of infection or contamination. A lesson that Raigmore hospital in inverness is hoping to teach their patients and visitors.

Raigmore hospital has arranged demonstrations on hand hygiene as the hospital has had multiple outbreaks of the Norovirus. Noroviruses are a group of viruses that cause inflammation of the stomach and large intestine lining.  If you have contracted a norovirus you may experience flu type symptoms, such as, a low-grade fever, Chills, Headaches, muscle aches and fatigue.  Norovirous can be controlled simply by washing your hands. Doctors at Raigmore hospital are hopeing that their demonstrations will help to “re-educate” patients and visitors on how to keep their hands clean.

Unfortunatley you cannot force someone to wash their hands, using signs can work to gently remind people to wash their hands, for these signs to work effectively please ensure you have placed them in a location where people will notice them and take action.

Here at label source, we supply a huge range of mandatory hand washing signs, ideal for companies to use in their bathrooms, food preparation area or hospitals. If you can can’t find the exact sign you require, feel free to get in touch! 

Manual handling is the act of lifting or moving loads that is carried out manually by workers. These activities can include lifting, pulling, pushing, holding, stacking of heavy loads, such as boxes.

Despite its apparent simplicity, manual handling accounts for over 30% of workplace injuries, which might come as a surprise. The reason for this high number of injuries is often attributed to complacency, or the failure to anticipate anything going wrong when lifting objects.

Manual Handling Injuries

There are many risks of manual handling. Here are a few examples of manual handling injuries that can result from incorrectly picking up heavy loads.

Back Injury

Regarding manual handling, the most vulnerable area of your body is your back, especially if you lack proper lifting technique or are attempting to lift something too heavy for your capacity.

Being cautious about your back is essential not only during lifting but also while carrying, as improper posture can quickly lead to back damage. Stooping or twisting, for example, increases the risk of injury to your back, including spinal injuries and slipped discs.

Hand Injuries

During various manual handling tasks such as lifting, carrying, pushing, or pulling, you typically rely on your hands for gripping. However, this can pose its own hazards depending on the nature of the objects you handle. For instance, if the load is hot, it might cause burns or scalds to your skin, and if it has sharp edges, there's a risk of getting cut.

Hand injuries may not always result from direct contact with the load; the way you position them also matters. When dealing with heavy loads, failing to remove your fingers from underneath during placement could lead to bruising or even broken bones. Additionally, there's potential for fingers to become trapped between the load and nearby obstacles like containers or walls, especially during team lifts involving other individuals moving the load.

Strains and Sprains 

Have you ever experienced the frustration of picking up an object only to realise it was heavier or more challenging to grip than expected? Or perhaps, as time passed, the burden became too much to bear? You're not alone in this experience. However, it's important to be cautious, as overextending your muscles beyond their limits can result in inflammation, bruising, and discomfort.

Muscular strains and sprains frequently occur during manual handling tasks, particularly affecting the back, arms, or wrists. Therefore, it's crucial to be mindful of these risks and handle objects with proper care and technique to avoid unnecessary strain and potential injuries.

Hernias 

Continuously subjecting the abdomen to strain can lead to hernias, and it's important to note that most hernias require surgical intervention for improvement. Overexerting yourself by attempting to lift loads beyond your capacity can increase the likelihood of developing a hernia, and this risk tends to be higher as you age.

To ensure safety during manual handling tasks, it’s crucial to carefully assess the activity, taking into account both the load and the individual involved. When necessary, provide appropriate lifting aids to reduce the risk of hernias and other potential injuries.

Foot Injuries

Even though lifting typically involves hands, foot injuries remain among the seven types of manual handling injuries. Fractures often affect the foot when handling leads to dropping the load, especially if proper protective footwear is not worn.

Certain actions during manual handling, such as lifting heavy loads, carelessly dropping them from height instead of lowering them cautiously, or failing to maintain a secure grip, can result in crushing, bruising, or even broken bones in the feet. Therefore, it's crucial to prioritise safety measures and wear appropriate footwear to reduce the risk of foot injuries.

How to Prevent Manual Handling Injuries

In order to prevent manual handling injuries, follow these essential steps:

• Training and Education: Provide comprehensive training to employees on proper lifting techniques, hazard identification, and the use of lifting aids and equipment.
• Risk Assessment: Regularly assess manual handling tasks to identify potential hazards and implement control measures to reduce risks.
• Lifting Aids and Equipment: Encourage the use of lifting aids, such as trolleys and forklifts, to minimise physical strain.
• Team Lifts: Promote teamwork for heavy loads and ensure clear communication among team members.
• Proper Lifting Technique: Emphasise bending the knees, maintaining a straight back, and using leg muscles during lifting.
• Weight Limits: Establish and communicate weight limits for tasks to prevent overexertion.
• Cautionary and Safety Signs: Lifting safety signs will help you to comply with the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 (and the amendments in 2002), which refer to the lifting, lowering, carrying, pushing, pulling, or supporting of heavy loads. 

Protect Your Workers with Label Source

Here at Label Source, we offer a range manual handling safety signs and warning labels including signs that remind your workers to lift loads correctly, stack their loads correctly to prevent boxes falling, and to gently remind people to ask for help if they are tasked with moving a heavy load.

Not only do we produce safety signs, but we also supply safety guides. These are more detailed signs talking through how to prevent injury by correctly lifting loads, and the manual handling regulations, so in the event your employee has forgotten how to lift correctly, they can refer to these guides.

Here at Label source, we provide a huge range of electrical labels that will help you take the steps for identifying the risks and hazards of electricity and greatly reduce the likelihood of an accident.

Every year thousands of people are severely injured or killed because of accidents involving electricity. A lot of these accidents could have been prevented with the implantation of electrical warning labels; due to the very nature, and unpredictability of electricity not all of these accidents are not completely preventable. This is why it is so important that you take the correct steps to provide warnings to your employees or visitors of any electrical hazards they may encounter in your workplace.  

Contact with electricity can cause devastating effects, from shocks, which can lead to falls from height, to painful burns and in the worst cases, death.  The type of accident the contact causes is dependent on the voltage of the electricity.  Coming into contact with a voltage as low as 50v can cause a person to have a cardiac arrest, or prevent them from breathing.

To help prevent electrical accidents in the workplace it is crucial that you are testing your machinery,  equipment and even office tools such as computers, monitors and even your kettle to ensure that they are safe to use. In the event that you do find that some of your equipment is unsafe, make sure you shut it down immediately and use one of our plant maintenance electrical labels to inform every one of the machines status.

We take electrical safety extremely seriously here at label source, and we hope that you do too. This is why we have a whole department dedicated to electrical labels. Our electrical labels have been designed to highlight the hazards and dangers of live electrical equipment.  These electrical labels will help mark the following electrical hazards; High voltage, Connections, Power supplies, Live wires, and safety signs. Click here to view our electrical label department

We supply a comprehensive range of electrical labels, including a variety of specific electrical signs, however, if you cannot find the exact label that you are looking for please don’t hesitate to contact us or call a member of our customer service team on 0800 3761 693

One of the main health risks from contamination in engineering water systems is the bacterial infection Legionella. This bacteria can be transmitted through water vapour or mist and inhaled, hence leading to respiratory infections. The more severe cases are from Legionnaires disease, which can lead to pneumonia , and other secondary  infections, which can lead to death. The milder forms are Pontiac fever, and Lochgilhead fever.

Legionella microorganisms flourish in temperatures of between 25°C and 45°C, particularly, if an abundance of nutrients such as sludge, sediment or rust reside in the water system.  Structures at risk include cooling towers, air conditioning, hot and cold water systems, humidifiers, spa pools, hot tubs and Jacuzzis, decorative water fountains, dental equipment, ice making machines and dishwashers.

It is necessary that an assessment should be undertaken to prevent or control the risks of a Legionella outbreak. This can involve monitoring, inspecting, cleaning, disinfecting, flushing and sampling.

Label Source has supplied various labels to water system inspection companies and UKAS test laboratories to identify monitoring points, decontamination actions, safety procedures and inspection records. For further information on custom printed labels, signs and tags contact us by e-mail (sales@labelsource.co.uk) or by telephone (0800 3761693 in UK or +44 1443 842769 outside UK).

As Michael Crawford is preparing to reprise his much loved character Frank Spencer from the classic BBC television sitcom “Some Mothers do ‘Ave ‘Em” for sports relief, Crawford is famous for performing is own stomach-churning stunts which famously include, clinging onto the back of a bus on roller skates, driving off the end of a pier, sitting in a car hanging over a cliff.

Whilst talking about the reprisal of his character to the Daily Mail, he opened up about the stunts that he cannot perform due to health and safety laws; “I think the one where I am taking my driving test and I drive off the end of the pier into the sea. I don't think they'd allow that now.'

Michael says 'these days it's all much more difficult with health and safety rules. We didn't have those 42 years ago.'

Health and safety laws exist to safeguard people against being seriously or fatally injured at work, or made unwell within their work place. The regulations are in place to help protect people well-being and save lives, not prevent people from having fun.

Health and safety receives a lot of bad press, especially when companies impose “ridiculous” bans in the name of health and safety, for instance, the holiday resort giant, Butlins banned dodgem cars bumping into each other in their Skegness resort, the banning of street parties after the royal wedding, flying kites on a popular beach in Yorkshire and children being banned from playing football at school – unless the ball is made from sponge. 

These examples cause uproar in the media, with people exclaiming that “health and safety has gone mad!” and in these instances, yes it has! These are examples of people wrongly citing health and safety as a reason to prevent people from doing relatively harmless activities.

Granted, bumping into people in a dodgem car is not as dangerous as somebody sitting in a car that’s hanging over a cliff. But the media (most of the time) does not portray the importance of health and safety and why some bans are implemented in a positive light.

This bad press that health and safety receives is detrimental to the cause. The now common misguided conception of health and safety has led people away from focusing on the prevention of real workplace risks. Say, for example, your company have been performing a task a certain way for years and regulations come in guiding you on how you can complete the task in a safer manner, or prevent the task from being completed outright, it’s not health and safety gone mad, the regulations are in place to help you maintain high safety standards and protect your workforce.

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