British asbestos paper attracts full house

The worldwide problem of asbestos drew a high level of interest at the British Occupational Hygiene Society's 2005 conference, titled “Promoting a Healthy Working Environment”. Held in Manchester from 19 to 21 April, the conference was attended by 314 delegates and speakers from over 20 countries.

ECOSERV Occupational Health Director Julie Hills addressed a packed session with her paper titled “Asbestos Services Provided by Occupational Hygienists – The South African Situation”. The paper reported on the status of service levels and professional training for consultants providing asbestos identification, sampling and analysis in SA.

Engaging in a modicum of shock treatment, Julie used the opportunity to point out shortfalls in the South African situation. Her paper indicated the lack of training courses and quality control systems in asbestos services for occupational hygienists and identified the lack of standardized service and quality system requirements.

“My hope was to encourage international service providers to offer help and assistance in improving our situation,” she said. “The delegates were initially shocked as most people are under the impression that SA has a much stronger, well controlled and high quality of occupational hygiene services. But their reaction was wonderful with many questions and people coming forward with business cards and offering help.”

Asbestos is taken very seriously in Europe and the USA and is highly regulated. “Most international occupational hygiene associations have very strict registration and quality requirements for asbestos services. Many companies and individuals are highly qualified and experienced in handling this material and in many cases make this their sole area of expertise.”

South Africa needs to upgrade the present situation if it wants to be classed as on par with its international counterparts. “We cannot have a major weakness in one field which lets us down,” says Julie. “We must also remember that asbestos causes life-threatening illness and any survey performed by untrained or poor quality service providers puts lives at risk.”

The BOHS conference gave ECOSERV the opportunity to keep track of trends, new problems in the workplace and up-to-the-minute methodology. “This knowledge provides us with opportunities to improve our own service levels to clients. Meeting new people and interacting with occupational hygienists from many types of industry and countries also opens up potential for information sharing and guidance.”