As some of you may already know, this week is Fire Door Safety Week in the UK. This year, the team are seeking to raise awareness of the critical role that accurately installed and maintained fire doors play, in providing passive fire protection to commercial, public and multiple occupancy buildings. According to their official website, around 3 million new fire doors are bought and installed in the UK every year, which may sound like good news at first, but does not accurately represent the standard of safety upheld across the country. In reality, many fire doors fail to receive the maintenance they need to function safely, often left defective and damaged by a lack of care or poor installation.

In order to raise awareness of this common problem, and highlight its existence in public buildings across the country, Theodore Firedoor went undercover and collected video evidence on behalf of IFSEC Global, in order expose cases of neglect.

In the videos which can be viewed here, Theodore visits a hospital and newly built school - two buildings that would rely heavily on the ability to confine a blaze to certain areas for as long as possible, in the event of a fire. Both cases revealed a range of maintenance and installation issues, from faulty closures to missing 'Fire Door Keep Locked' signs. One of the most concerning issues of all, was the fact that the gaps between doors were well in excess of the fire door safety recommendations, which means that they would fail to prevent the passage of poisonous smoke in the event of a fire.

This footage demonstrated not only how common this issue can be, but also how often it arises in areas we wouldn't expect. When you think about workplaces and areas of vital public importance, such as hospitals, you would expect health and safety issues to be at the very top of their priority list. Sadly, the evidence shows that this is not the case in many instances, seemingly due to a lack of proper care and attention. Anyone who has even the slightest idea about proper health and safety practices, knows that it is not a one-off process, and that there are no fail-proof solutions to preventing everyday dangers. To provide the highest level of protection and confidence in health and safety measures, they must be assessed on a regular basis, in order to ensure that they are functioning to the correct standards for a valuable impact.

In order to ensure that fire doors do provide the correct level of protection, those responsible for installing and maintaining these measures should follow these four simple steps:

Step 1: Conduct a thorough assessment of the property, to identify where fire doors are needed.

Step 2: Install safety doors using a reputable and and certified supplier, before conducting another assessment once the work is completed, to ensure that the doors meet official safety standards.

Step 3: Ensure that fire doors are marked with the correct signs, to ensure that employees, occupants and other members of the public, are properly informed of how they should be used and maintained.

Step 4: Conduct regular checks of the fire doors, using the checklist provided by Fire Door Safety Week here, ensuring that a FDIS inspector is contacted if there is an area of concern.

For more fire safety stories and advice, here.

Working at height can be a very dangerous practice. According to the HSE's 2013/14 statistics on Slips, Trips & Falls, falls from height are the most comon cause of workplace fatalities in the UK, accounting for roughly 3 out of every 10 worker deaths in this country. Even when non-fatal, falling from height can result in all kinds of severe injuries, which is why it's important to take health and safety guidelines seriously when you and/or your employees work at height.

You might think that height safety isn't a concern for your company, but working at height doesn't necessarily mean being thirty feet off the ground. The HSE themselves state that ANY work carried out in a place where "a person could fall a distance liable to cause personal injury" counts as 'working at height', so that covers everything from rooftops and scaffolds to that chairs that some people will stand on to change a lightbulb.

What can I do to prevent falls from height?

As with any area of health and safety, the first step towards minimising the risk of a nasty fall is to carry out a thorough risk asssesment of the work being done and the working environment you're providing for it. A proper risk assessment should provide you with a list of things to do in order to ensure everybody's safety - depending on the industry you're in, this might include providing safety harnesses, installing an edge protection system, and/or using appropriate signs and labels to warn workers and others of any risks presents.

Here at Label Source, we stock a selection of safety signs and notices that are specifically designed to promote safety while working at height. These include:

• Safety Sign: 'Wear Safety Harness'
• Safety Sign: 'Wear Fall Arrest Equipment'
• Safety Sign: 'CAUTION - Mind the Drop'
• Work at Height Guide Poster

Browse our range of laser labels now >

Would you like to be able to print your own labels? Whether at home or in the office, this task is easier to accomplish than you might think. All you need is a standard laser printer and a computer programme that you can use to design each label's content - Microsoft Word, for example (click here to learn how to make labels using Microsoft Word).

Of course, you'll also need a sheet of blank labels to print on, and that's where Label Source can help you out. We sell a superb range of laser printer labels to accommodate all business and personal requirements, so whether you're looking to label your administrative records, your customers' parcels, or your own CD collection, rest assured we've got the perfect solution for you.

Choose from the following options:

• White Self-Adhesive Paper Labels (our standard printer label range, suitable for laser AND inkjet printers, other colours available)
   
• White Industrial Grade Laser Labels (also available in yellow, silver, and transparent)
   
• Tamper Evident Laser Labels (silver labels that leave behind a checkerboard security pattern if removed)
   
• Polyester Laser Labels (available in white, silver or yellow)
   
• Laser Printable Cable Marking Labels (ideal for cable and wire management)

If you'd rather print your labels using a thermal transfer printer, we also sell a wide range of thermal transfer labels for this purpose.

Do you need a different material from the ones listed above? Or perhaps you'd just like our experienced design team to handle the creation of your labels for you? Either way please contact Label Source today to discuss our bespoke labelling options.

We share a lot of health and safety stories on this blog, many of which focus on the news that yet another organisation has been prosecuted and fined for poor safety practices. More often than not, these law-breaking companies are in high-risk fields like construction and industrial manufacturing, and they're caught out because a worker suffered an injury (or worse) that would have been prevented had the proper regulations been observed.

Today, however, we'd like to share a news story which demonstrates that every company in every industry must abide by the rules or face the consequences. Earlier this week, The Enquirer reported that a business in Essex had been fined £20,000 for a number of unsafe practices. So what type of business was this? An engineering firm? A large factory?

No and no; in actual fact, it was the Crown Café in Southend-on-Sea. Last week, Southend Magistrates Court found the business guilty of the following food hygiene / health and safety breaches:

• No wash basin exclusively designated for hand washing in the kitchen
• No documented food safety management system
• Failure to maintain electrical installations in the café

These issues were documented during an inspection of the café in August 2015. Inspectors issues three Improvement Notices, but a follow-up inspection one year later found that the Notices had not been acted upon and that the problems were still there. As a result, Ms De'Ath was ordered to pay £1,440 (plus £1,000 in costs), and the business itself was fined £16,000 (plus £2,162.50 in costs). On top of that, Ms De'Ath and her business had to pay a victim surcharge totalling £188.

After the sentence had been delivered, a local councillor made the following statement:

"We hope this successful prosecution sends out a clear message to food businesses that you must take your responsibilities for food hygiene and health and safety seriously...we will take any action necessary to protect the public from harm."

Health and safety is a crucial concern for all organisations across all sectors. No matter what products or services you provide, it is your responsibility as a business owner to carry out a full risk assessment and take any measures necessary to minimise the risk that someone will come to harm on your premises or as a result of your operations. If you work in the food industry, then hygiene should of course be a key priority, but you are also bound by the same general health and safety legislation as any other commercial organisation. Don't let yourself end up in court like the owner of the Crown Café!

Here at Label Source, we stock a number of signs and notices to help promote hygiene and safety in a kitchen environment. Click here to browse our Kitchen Safety Signs range.

In order to protect employees and members of the public from harm, it is vitally important that chemical hazard labels are used by businesses who deal with potentially harmful chemicals.

Whatever the point of contact may be, it is paramount that the proper warnings are provided for substances which possess any of the following, hazardous qualities:

• Flammable, explosive or oxidising - Substances which present significant risks of when stored in certain conditions, or exposed to certain substances.
• Toxic - Substances which present a risk of contamination or poisoning.
• Corrosive - Chemicals such as acids, which are able to cause damage to human skin and other materials they come into contact with.
• Gases Under Pressure - Gases stored in compression containers, which present a risk of releasing the gas contained at a rapid rate if damaged.

& more, including irritants, and substances which may harm the environment.

In order to prevent damage and injury due to these risks, chemical hazard labels should be used at each point of potential contact, in order to ensure that the warnings are maintained at all times. 

Chemical Hazard Labels should be used:

• In workplaces with hazardous chemicals present, such as laboratories and hospitals.
• On containers which are being used to store and transport hazardous goods.
• On vehicles which are used to transport potentially dangerous chemicals.
• During the production and packaging of substances.

If your business deals with potentially harmful chemicals, which have the ability to impact the health and well-being of those who may come into contact with them, then be sure to use chemical hazard labels and signs! These are needed to provide effective warnings of the risks connected with these substances, and instructions for dealing with the substances.

Our full selection of dangerous chemical labels has labels to suit a wide variety of purposes, and can be found here.