The September 2016 Edition of the RRC Middle East Newsletter is out! Download it now for the latest news and information from RRC, including: Hasan’s thoughts on Shifting Attitudes to Health and Safety in the Middle East The last few spaces available on Middle East courses this Autumn Our new Fire Safety Consultancy RRC Middle East in action, as well as celebrating recent student success Click here to download the latest RRC Middle East Newsletter.
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The Sun Has Arrived and It Is Great For Us, Isn’t It?
We wait for them during the entire winter and most of spring, but finally they have arrived, those nice, warm sunny days. They get us thinking about holidays and sunbathing; they boost our moral and make us feel happier. This is the time of the year where we start to envy those working outdoors such as construction workers, gardeners and postmen… We think they’re lucky because they get to enjoy all those benefits the sun brings all day long, but are they? Overexposure, as well as regular and prolonged exposure, to the sun can cause sunburns, skin ageing, eye damage and skin cancer. It may also affect the immune system.…
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Shall We Stay or Shall We Go? The Potential Implications of ‘Brexit’ on H&S Regulation in UK
Like many, I have felt somewhat battered and bemused by the recent torrent of information and argument about our future, or not, as members of the EU. Trying to make a well-informed decision about whether to stay or leave requires trawling through a huge amount of material and listening carefully to arguments on the economy, immigration, sovereignty and so on. Faced with this bewildering mass of information it’s no wonder that many people seem to be finding it hard to make up their minds. So, I thought to myself, what issue of personal importance can I focus on in an effort to see which way to leap on 23 June? …
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Fire Safety Precautions
Fire-walk with me ‘We’re surrounded by fire’! This was the exclamation by a student on a recent course I tutored. We had just returned from an impromptu ‘walk-about’ of the building where I was delivering elements of the NEBOSH National Certificate in Fire Safety and Risk Management. It all started when we took a break for coffee and cakes and I asked the group of students to make a note of the ‘factors relating to means of escape and methods and systems to give early warning in case of fire’, the idea being that as they walked through the building to where the coffee was , they should observe and…
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Natural Cycles and Their Delicate Environmental Balance
Being quite a keen cyclist I want to talk to you about natural cycles – no, not about biking around the countryside but how substances and elements are moved around in nature. If you research how long the planet has been in existence you will come up with a figure of 4 billon years, give or take a few million. Yet, even after all this time, substances on which nature relies to exist have not been consumed. This seems a little odd, when you think about it – 4 billon years is a very long time. But it’s because Earth is essentially a closed-loop system: very little gets in and…
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Risk Assessment – The Safe Person or Safe Place Dilemma
Controls, Costs and Counting Beans In a previous contribution on risk assessment I discussed the concept of ‘systematic’ and how it is a good idea to take everything into account, even though it may not be of great risk. The good thing about doing it that way, of course, is that it proves you have at least considered the hazard and its risk, even though it has turned out (at time of assessment) to be insignificant. How many of you think a risk assessment is an exercise to kill trees, chew them up and mix with water, flatten them into paper, write on them and file them away to gather…
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Going With The Flow – Cheaper in the Long Run?
I often travel to London from the West Country by train and always enjoy passing through the Somerset Levels. I look at the farmsteads and churches perched on hillocks surrounded by miles of flat, green farmland and try to imagine what it must have been like when King Alfred was hiding from the Danes in the 9th century and these were island refuges in an inland sea. Well, travelling at the tail-end of Winter 2014 I felt transported back in in time, as my train sailed across mile after mile of water and the hillocks really were islands! This was a glimpse of what the Levels were like in a…
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Friction Resistance on The NEBOSH Diploma
“Resistance is futile” is the catchy battle cry of the Borg Collective – an alien cyborg race bent on galactic domination. While they have some redeeming qualities (the Borg Queen is strangely attractive) they do have an attitude to resistance that is not shared by their invaded planetary systems. Friction – as covered in Element 1 of Unit C, NEBOSH Diploma – is all about resistance. Most parents of young children and teenagers will be very familiar with resistance. Sometimes it delivers pain, sometimes pleasure. Sometimes it is inconvenient, but it can be a wonderful thing.
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System Addict
What is risk and why do we assess it – subjects that sit at the very heart of the NEBOSH General Certificate, and the health and safety sphere in general. Risk is the likelihood (the ‘chance’, the ‘probability’) that harm will occur – TOGETHER with the consequences (the ‘severity’ or ‘outcome’) of it if it does. But you knew that, right? Risk assessment is done so we don’t break the law, isn’t it? No! Risk assessment is done to keep directors and business-owners out of jail! Well, I guess they are one and the same thing, and these are the main objectives of some. . .
