HSE warns through 'Shattered Lives' "Don't put your career on ice!"

HSE warns through 'Shattered Lives' "Don't put your career on ice!"

LONDON. April 4, 2008/3mnewswire.org/-- The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is continuing its campaign this month to reduce the number of slips, trips and falls in the workplace by making spot checks on companies in the most at-risk sectors.

Every 25 minutes someone breaks or fractures a bone at work. The 'Shattered Lives' campaign is raising awareness of this and the devastating consequences of slips, trips and falls in the workplace.

Mike Walters HSE Acting Principal Inspector said:
"We will be carrying out spot-checks in the South East to ensure that companies are not skating on thin ice, when it comes to reducing the risks of slips, trips and falls.

"Slips, trips and falls can be viewed as being minor, funny accidents but the effects are not. It can lead to major injuries, a lifetime of disability or time off work and in worst cases, fatalities.

"Shattered Lives' encourages people to change their attitudes: if you spot a hazard, don't assume 'somebody else will sort it out."

Latest figures for slips, trips and falls in the South East last year, indicate that 5,695 people were injured and there were five fatalities as a result of a slip, trip or fall - costing the local community almost £102.5milllion.

HSE's 'Shattered Lives' campaign offers guidance to employers and employees in the construction, building and plant maintenance, catering and hospitality and food manufacturing and retail industries where the incidence of injuries resulting from slips, trips and falls is highest.

For more information on the 'Shattered Lives' campaign please visit http://www.hse.gov.uk/shatteredlives/index.htm or call InfoLine on 0845 3450055.

Notes to Editors:
1. The Health and Safety Executive is responsible for health and safety regulation in Great Britain.

2. Last year over a third of injuries from slips, trips and falls reported to the HSE, originated in the food manufacturing and food retail industries and in catering and hospitality, over 10 major injuries a week are reported. Of the almost 11,000 injuries reported to the HSE last year from slips, trips and falls in the sectors targeted through this campaign, nearly half (46%) were from the construction, building and plant maintenance industries.

3. To view regional breakdown of slips, trips and falls incidents and industry specific statistics for food retail, food manufacturing, construction building and plant maintenance, catering and hospitality please visit http://www.hse.gov.uk/news/2008/shatteredlives.htm

4. The overall unit cost to society of an incident is divided into its component costs:
* human costs;
* cost of lost output; and
* resource costs.

The human cost element of the appraisal values are based on the Department for Transport (DfT) estimate of the value of preventing a fatality (VPF). Human costs represent the cost of "pain, grief and suffering to the casualty, relatives and friends and, for fatal casualties, the intrinsic loss of enjoyment of life over and above the consumption of goods and services".

Estimates for the cost of lost output and resource costs represent the amount of production (output) that the person being injured (dead) would have produced had s/he not been injured (dead) and the corresponding resources.

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