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How well does this paint clump together? As a spray, it seems likely that some of the particles would linger in the air. Medical researchers are still trying to get a handle on the risks of nanoparticles to living beings -- we just aren't made to filter stuff at that level because its not common in the natural environment for there to be free-floating bits at the nanoscale. It might be safe, but we don't currently know. Here is one report from the UK government just listing the research unknowns about nanoparticle exposure. Before we start spraying whole buildings in stuff like this, we should know the environmental and health impacts. I hope the inventors of this stuff start working on those questions before they try to productize this.

It may be due to the workplace (or just the carpenter) using that as an excuse, but really, UK health and safety regulations aren't what you think they are.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/myth/ind...

The Health and Safety Executive is a law enforcement agency in the UK who investigate and prosecute companies over dangerous or unsafe working environments and practices. This is a criminal prosecution not a civil damages case.

This is why (at least in the US), standard (and required) practice is to place a lock on the source of energy, and retain the only key to said lock. If multiple workers are all working on the same circuit, each worker has his (or her) own lock on the circuit.

It's called lockout/tagout, and there are SEVERE fines for removing somebody else's lock (and if somebody gets killed, due to your removing his lock, that would be considered manslaughter)

It's mandatory in the UK too. Often ignored by independent electricians working by themselves, but hopefully less so by those working for large companies....... UK Health and Safety Executive page on the topic: http://www.hse.gov.uk/safemain...

If he was not a competent person then he had no business attempting the work.

The sad truth is, that the incompetent don't realise that they're not competent at the job.

It happened in the United Kingdom and live line working is perfectly legal. If you read the article you will see the death occurred due to a lack of communication causing the people to be unaware they where working in the vicinity of line equipment.

Here is a link to the Health and Safety Executive's press release on the subject which has more details. The full judgement does not seem to have hit the judiciary web side yet. At least my searches are coming up blank.

http://press.hse.gov.uk/2015/e...

Basically the fines where from not operating proper health and safety systems. If someone has enough patience you should be able to dig out the full judgement from the

Dig down, I did cast a wide net.
I found this on page 2.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/legionna...

and this, more directed search, gives more.

https://www.google.ca/search?q...

but the 2P is correct, this should be a solved problem

Use a real keyboard, mouse and monitor - why do you need to look at the laptop?

Not doing this is either illegal, or close, in the UK: http://www.hse.gov.uk/msd/dse/guidance.htm

Except for infrequent short-term use, a real keyboard and mouse is necessary, and a docking station or stand that holds the laptop screen up to the correct level (top of screen just below eye level, at least an arm's length away) or a separate monitor.

(I had the annual "watch this video on using computers" thing on Thursday. We all laughed at the poor production and daft people in it, but I think everyone went back to their desks and adjusted something that wasn't quite right.)

You don't even need to visit China to read about industrial accidents. Motorway accidents for travelling sales staff are just as dangerous:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/aberdeen/worker-loses-his-hands-in-industrial-press-accident-1.280310

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2168607/Woman-25-intensive-care-SCALPED-hair-got-caught-machine-work.html

http://www.hse.gov.uk/press/2011/coi-e-4211.htm

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4752201/Scalped-mum-nearly-killed-after-her-hair-catches-in-a-machine.html

I used to work at HSL, left about 5 years ago. It has an unusual remit. Its origins are in providing scientific support to the Health and Safety Executive (e.g. accident investigations, providing scientifically sound guidance to HSE inspectors etc.) but it does a lot of research into wider occupational/public health areas too. It also has some of the UK's leading experts in the effects of fire and explosions, and a fair amount of work done there relates to that - most of the fireworks authorised for sale in the UK get safety tested there, for example. It was a nice place to work, as there were always a bunch of interesting projects being done. The pay there sucks, but I kinda regret leaving, even though I now earn more.

For many HSL research projects, the resulting reports are available on their website (generally those where 100% of the funding came from the public purse). There doesn't seem to be one about Vomiting Larry/norovirus available yet, a press release ( http://www.hsl.gov.uk/news/hsl%E2%80%99s-vomiting-larry-featured-on-the-bbc-website.aspx ) says "The outcomes of these studies have contributed to reviews of healthcare guidance in hospitals and are due to be published in relevant journals in the near future.", so seemingly not yet published.

A list of publicly available HSL papers/reports from 2012 is at http://www.hsl.gov.uk/publications/bibliography-reports-papers-and-articles/publications-2012.aspx
Where work was funded by or done in conjunction with HSE, reports are published on the HSE website at http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrhtm/index.htm

A few states, such as Australia and the UK have such a thing as corporate manslaughter. Not every murderer acts on his own initiative, sometimes he has his employer's interests at heart. UK version

What you describe is not health and safety, it is stupidity and arse covering. The UK Health and Safety Executive put out a series of H&S myths to try and dispel them: http://www.hse.gov.uk/myth/top10myths.ht

No, 'hazardous' is ambiguous. How hazardous? To whom? Via what routes? The correct terms are harmful (damaging to health at levels that might be encountered, e.g not eating 100 kg of it), toxic (harmful at very low levels), carcinogenic and teratogenic. The correct terms are here: http://www.hse.gov.uk/chip/phrases.htm This is why risk assessments in chemistry are carefully worded in some detail. You can't describe how harmful a chemical is in a single word.

And so, if Apple actually employed these people (as a responsible company would), it'd still be just fine and dandy for employees to have to ask to go to the bathroom? Somehow, I doubt that happens in Cupertino...

It sure happens elsewhere in the US. http://www.askamanager.org/2011/08/employer-is-monitoring-my-bathroom-breaks.html

ome backstory, I’ve been working full time as a salaried, non-exempt employee at my company for the past three years. Throughout the entirety of my time here, I have often stayed late, arrived early, and rarely (if ever) eat lunch away from my desk in order to complete everything on my plate. Basically, I work much more than the 40 hours a week I’m being paid for. I enjoy my job and pride myself on the work I do, so I do this happily and without complaining. I’ve also never received anything less than an excellent review.

I recently was pulled into a surprise meeting with HR, where they told me that I am taking too many bathroom breaks and it is becoming unacceptable.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/press/2010/coi-yh-08310.htm

Nobody is keeping statistics EXCEPT the third party insurance providers. This is largely true in medicine as well. Unless there is a contagious factor, the only nationwide stats you will find on injuries (broken arms) is from insurance carriers. Why you choose to denigrate that fact when Apple is involved but not for heart attacks is sort of, well, suspicious.

I am quite sure Apple keep very precise statistics of all breakages reported to them, whether they agree to fix them or not, though of course they won't share them. As to consumer reports (for example), they could easily do a survey of iPhone owners, and I'd trust them a hell of a lot more than someone whose interest is in inflating figures like this to sell insurance.

As to medicine, the fact that insurance providers hold all the power in the US is an anomaly. In most other first world countries, insurers don't run the health system, and proper statistics on all types of injuries are compiled by a central body and doctors themselves, not by a party with a monetary interest. Just because it is done that way in the US doesn't mean it is normal or efficient. Here's an example:

http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/overall/hssh0405.pdf

The only source less likely to provide reliable statistics on breakages is Apple, and I wouldn't trust these statistics from anyone with a monetary interest in the results - it's too easy to lie by tweaking the figures you choose to present.

It's actually pretty good advice:

Every employer shall so plan the activities of users at work in his undertaking that their daily work on display screen equipment is periodically interrupted by such breaks or changes of activity as reduce their workload at that equipment

Conclusions from the research papers (emphasis mine):
Are tanning beds "safe"? Human studies of melanoma:

Although the data appear to indicate a clear relationship between sunbed use and the development of melanoma, these data could be confounded by the lack of accurate measurement of timing and dose of sunbed exposures and lack of thorough control for concurrent sun exposure and host factors such as phenotype and genetic susceptibility. Until these factors are better characterized, we must exercise caution in evaluating the extent of the risk for cutaneous melanoma posed by sunbeds. Nonetheless, because of this very uncertainty, the data do not support a claim that sunbeds are safe, and such claims should be considered misleading.

In conclusion, it is clear that both UVA and UVB are mutagenic for skin, and for melanocytes in particular. UVA is much less mutagenic in unpigmented cells, but UVA flux to the basal epidermis from sunlight is typically around 50-100-fold higher than UVB flux. Moreover there is evidence that melanin and especially pheomelanin can photosensitize cells to UVA mutagenicity. UVA can initiate melanomas in fish and melanocytic hyperplasia in pigmented opossums, while UVB can induce melanoma in susceptible mice and UVA has generally not been tested. Pending better experimental data on whether UVA can indeed cause melanoma in mammals, and given that it is mutagenic and cell mutations can cause cancer, much stronger steps should be taken internationally to warn users of sunbeds â" even those emitting UVA only â" that this activity may be hazardous, such as mandatory warning notices. An example of such a notice has been made available in the UK (Health and Safety Executive 1995), also at http://www.hse.gov.uk/radiation/nonionising/sunbeds.htm. Specifically use by those under 18 should be banned, and publicity claiming that UVA sunbeds are safe should not be permitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_manslaughter

http://www.hse.gov.uk/corpmanslaughter/faqs.htm

http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2008/03/15/41798/corporate-manslaughter-legal-q.html
i am pretty sure this law was brought in due to a few things where the coprorate body was deemed to be liable for deaths caused but there seemed to be inadequate laws to punish the heads of the coprorate bodies

it's not just businesses but also the national health bodies here in the UK and also local/regional councils too.

from what i gather the charges being brought are rare and even rarer is a successful charge.

You are wrong. To have such a law would be madness; it would make it impossible to sue people, since accusing them would be slandering them, whatever the outcome of the case.

I suspect that this whole story is an urban myth that may have a grain of truth. I worked through the mid 70's and 80's on Process Control and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems that are used to control nuclear, chemical, space and pipeline systems. This was the period when systems moved from largely pneumatic telemetered systems to electronic and computerised control. The old technology had run large industrial systems since the war, and was by and large highly reliable. The new technology was considered cheap and inferior and was not (and is still not) trusted. Such systems were created fail safe, such that computer crashes caused shut downs, not explosions. This was very ingrained into the designers of such systems. Failures such as Chernobyl and Flixborough added to the designers' caution, even though control was sometimes not a contributory factor. Most software systems in this category required very significant source code modifications to make them fit for purpose. It was rare to ship a system without giving the purchaser inspection access to the code so that they could assess the quality for themselves. The designers of this soviet pipeline would have had double cause for concern, and would most certainly have been suspicious of the provenance of the system. In such a case, it is highly likely that they would have built in extra hardware constraints into the system to prevent failure due to malicious software, especially if they could not read and validate the source.

Sorry, but your logic is broken. No human being on earth can live without a 100% chance of dying. It's an inevitability. You're born, you're going to die.

Anyway, these sorts of comments are the result of the uneducated public misunderstanding the way that risk is calculated. You see, there is no such thing as a "safe" dose of radiation, much in the same way that there is no such thing as a "safe" speed at which to drive your car (other than zero). This concept is lost on most people.

The MOX safety records debacle was a storm in a teacup. The reason these things get so much attention is that nuclear safety standards are so high, the slightest erosion of them is taken very seriously. To put some perspective on the MOX records falsification, it was bored human operators missing out a final stage in the procedure because it was tedious. The MOX pellets are made entirely by machine to the highest possible engineering standards. Part of the manufacturing process involves measuring the dimensions of the pellets to ensure that they are within tolerance. This is done automatically using lasers. The final stage missed out by the operators was a manual check using a micrometer, which is orders of magnitude less accurate, but required by the procedure. They got bored so they wrote an Excel macro to generate false measurements complete with "random experimental error".

It is worth remembering that the BBC is vehemently anti-nuclear and likes a good bit of sensationalism, especially when it is "anti-establishment."

As for the contamination of the Irish sea, yes Sellafield has been discharging small qulantites of radioactive waste into it for deacdes, but if you care to check the facts you will see that the quantities have been reduced dramatically over the years, and continue to be revised downwards in accordance with the principles of constantly striving to improve safety and treatment of the environment. That article is a load of scaremongering FUD. Just look at the way it is written. A meltdown at Sellafield? What has that got to do with treating radioactive waste?

If you want the facts about nuclear power, nuclear waste, radiation, nuclear safety and regulation, you could do a lot wors than to start here:
The Nuclear Safety Directorate and the National Radiological Protection Board

Health & Safety & Duty of Care.
Once you start charging for entry you are in a whole differnt world of liability. For example, are you insured should someone sue for non provision of something or other?
Maintaining order- Don't think you can just haul someone out for being a twat- Security need to be identifiable: Numbers on shirts, people! Preferably they should not play at all so that they can't be accused of bias. In an ideal world, they should come from a reputable company.

Fire!
Is your venue appropriate? If you have a 1000 capacity venue, that's more likely than not to be it's standing capacity. Seated is more likely to be 400. Fire lanes- make sure there are passages at least 2m wide in the layout and they are clearly marked and kept clear!
On a related note- Power. RCD's are absolutely essential. Don't rely on the house sparky, get someone in you trust.
(plug- Fantastic Illuminations for all your temporary power needs!)

First Aid
Overkill? possibly not. Last thing you need is some kid's heart to fail, or someone to have taken something less than appropriate and then you're fucked and standing on a manslaughter charge. In the UK, I'd suggest volunteers from Red Cross or St John's ambulance.

Alcohol
Planning on selling it? You so need to get a license! Which brings us neatly onto...(UK Specific)

Public Entertainment Licenses
If you have to ask what this is then you need to speak to your local authority. At least two months in advance.

This is a 2 minute brainstorming session and I haven't even got started. The factors involved can be immense, so don't be afraid to talk to people like the HSE.
Or even drop me a line if you're in the UK and you need some guidance!

I think we've passed the point where product liability ends individual responsibility takes over. Perhaps they should have a warning label because little Johnny spends so much time on his PS2 that he doesn't eat properly, and that's bad for his health as well.