Health and Safety Executive: smoke not listed as hazardous substance

Before Christmas I reposted Eddie Douthwaite's interview with local radio station Leith FM.

In this interview, Eddie discusses the claim that 'there is no safe level of secondary smoke' (07.49 minutes into the broadcast). He points out that the UK is failing to meet European standards on outdoor air quality while enforcing bans on smoking indoors. Specifically he refers to a document on the regulation of hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment, in which safe levels of all manner of toxic substances are referred to, and maximum standards of exposure are set. Yet the anti-smoking authorities persist in their doctrine that there is 'no safe level of secondary smoke'.

Eddie also asks why the legislation wasn't passed under the Health and Safety at Work Act. The Health and Safety Executive refers only briefly on its website to the issue of smoking at work, and its page on smoking at work refers to Action on Smoking and Health, ASH Scotland and other bodies external to HSE.

So does HSE really believe that passive smoking is a risk? If you go to the Homepage, the drop-down menu ('Choose a topic') includes everything under the sun ... but not tobacco smoke, or smoking. The list of industries featured does not include the hospitality industry, or the care industry, both of which include work sites that are exempt from the smoking ban under UK and/or Scottish law. Exemptions are on a limited scale, but realise that the list is all about regulating hazards at work including the regulation of hazardous substances. An ordinary person might conclude that smoke is a trivial issue compared with other substances that require to be regulated.

A government department that concludes that exposure to flour, water and cleaning agents requires caterers to be protected doesn't have much to say about secondary smoke. Engineering carries hazards that are listed in more detail and the protective kit includes breathing apparatus. It does not say of any substance that there is 'no safe level', although it does indicate the gravity of specific hazards. Several other occupational groups are discussed. 

We are now nearly six years into the Scottish ban and four-and-a-half years into the English and Welsh ones, and the United Kingdom's Health and Safety Executive does not appear to have an independent view on the subject. It also fails to mention any of the areas in which smoking is still carried out as a consequence of exemptions to the smoking ban as specific areas for concern. It does not recommend gloves or breathing equipment to counteract the effects of secondary smoke.

Is the HSE failing in its responsibilities? Or are the bodies that promote smoking bans overly assiduous in their efforts to persuade us that there is no safe level of secondary smoke, when such an outrageous claim has not been made about the most corrosive industrial toxins.

(I know what I think.)

                                      

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Eddie Douthwaite on Radio Leith FM

Workplace Hazards

I've decided to include the Hazards Magazine in the links to this blog. The smoking ban was brought in on the pretext that it was a health hazard after all. So the concerns of this profession are quite important to us.

This is a publication that campaigns for better health and safety at work. It is critical of the agencies that are meant to enforce health and safety legislation. I haven't yet found an equivalent publication that (critically) covers Scottish workplaces.

In the popular imagination, 'Elf and Safety' is getting more powerful. In truth it is getting less powerful. Its enforcement activities are low and getting lower, meaning that employers are less likely to be pursued for negligence in the workplace. This article, entitled A Neutered Watchdog, states chillingly that 'only a third of amputations are now investigated by the Health and Safety Executive'.

Co-authors Dave Whyte and Steve Tombs, in a separate interview, opine that the HSE has effected a 'surrender to the anti-regulation rhetoric of successive Labour governments'. Well ... see, we were being lied to. Few people would accuse Labour of a light touch when it came to regulations, but clearly they were ready to take it easy when safety at work was at stake ... but let's investigate further before making any allegations. It isn't expected that the Con-Dem Coalition will do anything to tighten the regulatory framework.

Warning: The Hazards Magazine has documented its suspicion of the tobacco industry, equating it with any industry bogeyman who invests in studies claiming the noxious chemicals he requires people to work with to be safe. Their claim that the expression 'manufacturing scientific uncertainty' originates with the tobacco industry may have substance. In their eyes, corporate money is evil and exploitative whether in the hands of tobacco or any other nasty employer.

It shouldn't really come as a surprise that a smoking ban at work was not really a decision taken on safety grounds, although we knew that it didn't come from the government's health and safety agency. What I didn't know was that in areas where workers were crying out for intervention (and this does come from Scotland), they were being told there was no danger, or that the government had decided that a light touch was in order.
Whatever.

Light touch indeed. The smoking ban has been anything but.