Browsing: Dangerous substances

A company that failed to comply with its legislative duty to conduct computer modelling of planned changes to a mine's ventilation system has been convicted and fined $480,000, after a worker was exposed to unsafe levels of heat and diesel fumes, and died.

• WHS discrimination charge follows COVID suspension; and
  
• Employer fined $230k for pinch point breaches.

An award-winning PCBU responded to the safety and operational challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic by implementing strategies across all levels of the hierarchy of controls, including a sign-language system to reduce the spread of respiratory droplets.

• Another duty holder charged with COVID safety breaches;
  
• Individual fined $50k for carbon monoxide failings; and
  
• Traumatic brain injury attracts penalties for PCBU, director.

• Worker handed WHS fine for category-2 caring breaches;
  
• WA pumps funds into WHS transition; and
  
• Silica compliance improving, but air monitoring a concern.

A company has been ordered to pay a worker more than $1.5 million in damages, after he suffered permanent brain damage from inhaling carbon monoxide in a work vehicle, just one day after another driver was found dead in the car.

An employer that allowed an informal work practice to develop, where unqualified personnel performed hot work, has been fined $180,000, after a drum exploded and caused serious injuries.

An appeals commission has quashed a decision that a worker's fatal heart attack was caused by work-related road pollution, finding the decision maker failed to assess the "status of the conclusions reached" in studies on the link.

Boral subsidiaries in two states have been charged with breaching workplace health and safety laws in failing to adequately protect workers from airborne silica dust, while a small business has been charged with similar contraventions. The developments coincide with Safe Work Australia's call for employers to prevent lung diseases through the hierarchy of controls.

A man has been convicted of two category-1 WHS breaches - the first reckless conduct convictions recorded in his jurisdiction. After he was sentenced, a regulator slammed his workplace's stoic culture and the inaction of witnesses to a teenage worker's serious burns.