Unite Health & Safety News reports that:
“The current signs are that the outbreak of H1N1 may spread quickly but initial indications seem to be that the strain that has been carried to Europe is milder than was feared at first. That could however change as the virus mutates. Meanwhile however there is no reason for any panic measures and simple good hygiene and people who are sick staying at home is the best immediate response.”
Please see below a link to the revised TUC guidance on pandemic flu:
http://www.tuc.org.uk/h_and_s/tuc-13401-f0.cfm
–in which it is stated:
“There is also no evidence that, outside health care situations, the general use of facemasks has any actual effect on protecting people or reducing the speed of a pandemic’s development. Although the evidence from the recent SARS outbreak suggests that people will seek to use them regardless of any advice on their effectiveness, they are not generally recommended by health professionals. In addition, there is evidence that some people think that if they wear a mask, even if they are ill, they can still come to work and this could actually lead to increased risk. This is not however the case in health care and where there is likely to be close or frequent contact with symptomatic patients and the use of gloves and masks may be required.
In May 2009 the HSE issued advice that stated “it should not be necessary for workers to wear masks routinely when in contact with the general public. However, there may be some situations when it will be advisable for a worker to wear a mask. Such a situation will depend on the nature of the work and where it is to be carried out.”
Refer then, to the HSE guidance to employers:
http://www.hse.gov.uk/news/2009/swineflu.htm?ebul=hsegen/05-may-2009&cr=2
Follow a link there to the HSE Biosafety website:
http://www.hse.gov.uk/biosafety/diseases/pandflu.htm
and note the section entitled: Do my employees need to wear a mask at work?
Information on face masks, and the differences between surgical masks and FFP3 masks, is found down the page, at http://www.hse.gov.uk/biosafety/diseases/pandflu.htm#15
When it comes to deciding about the use of masks, the information on the blog Promtheus Unbound looks helpful:
According to the Los Angeles Times today, both face masks and frequent hand washing provide equal levels of protection:
No single action…will provide complete protection in areas with confirmed swine flu cases, health officials said. It isn’t practical to wear a mask all the time, even a quality mask, and the devices aren’t foolproof.
“Once they get moist, they are no longer useful,” Mascola said. “Your saliva is going to be pooling in that mask. That will make is not useful because germs will be able to permeate.”
Taking a mask on and off contaminates it and makes it less useful, as well. It is effective “only for a 20-minute to a half-hour period,” she said. “Even in those places during the SARS epidemic, they found hand-washing as effective as wearing masks.”
So at least wash your hands frequently throughout the day. And here’s something ironic. Mask wearers may be lulled into a deluded and Samson-like omnipotence (”So long as my mask is on, I can go where I want and do anything”):
Masks may give people a false sense of security, said Dr. Laurene Mascola, director of acute communicable disease control for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
“You would have to wear it 100% of the time that you are outside,” she said of masks and respirators.
Further, face masks and respirators shouldn’t replace other precautions.
“Somewhat lost in all the excitement is that we continue to need to take standard control measures,” said Dr. Paul Holtom, associate professor of medicine at USC’s Keck School of Medicine and a hospital epidemiologist at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center and the USC University Hospital.
To avoid infecting others, ill people should stay home, avoid crowds, cover their mouth when they cough or sneeze, and wash their hands before touching eyes, nose or mucus membranes.
Sometimes the simplest remedies are, in fact, the best.
A dead rabbit gets swifter, better justice
13 June, 2009 — handsignsI couldn’t let this one slip by without re-printing it here. (Thanks to Rory O’Neill, editor of Hazards magazine, for permission to use such articles from Risks, the TUC’s weekly online bulletin for safety reps and others.)
Safety campaigners have reacted furiously after the death of a rabbit was treated more seriously by the courts than the death of a construction worker. Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK), which speaks for the bereaved relatives of workplace fatality victims, was speaking out after Discovery Homes (Scotland) Ltd was fined £5,000 and the firm’s director Richard Pratt £4,000 on 8 June after the death of employee Andrezej Freitag. On the same day Steven Appleton was jailed for causing unnecessary suffering to a rabbit at Magistrates Court in Caerphilly after he stamped it to death. He received a six month custodial sentence. FACK member Sharon Norman, whose father Gordon Field was crushed to death at work, has written to prime minister Gordon Brown to protest. She said: ‘When I read the two news reports and the outrageously different penalties handed down by our courts to the killer of a rabbit and the killers of a man, I was so angry and I had to email the prime minister. I asked him to explain to me how this could be right.’ She added: ‘Every year many more people are given custodial and suspended sentences for animal cruelty than have ever been given such sentences for killing a worker. We don’t condone animal cruelty but cruelty to people that devastates families must surely be more serious?’ She added it took three years after her dad was killed at work for his negligent employer to be fined, ‘yet the rabbit killer was tried, convicted and sentenced in a few months.’
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