Asbestos Awareness - Be Alert Not Alarmed

The 2016-17 Progress Report on the National Strategic Plan for Asbestos Management and Awareness shows increased focus across Australia on asbestos management and awareness.  
With the ultimate goal of eliminating asbestos-related disease in Australia, the Federal Government's Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency continues to provide a national focus on asbestos issues including compliance with Asbestos Awareness.

The Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency (ASEA) was established 1 July 2013 as a statutory authority that provides a national focus on asbestos issues. Part of the agency's function is to encourage, coordinate, monitor and report on the implementation of the National Strategic Plan for Asbestos Management and Awareness. The plan is a long-term strategy for achieving significant progress in six areas related to current asbestos issues in Australia:

• Awareness
• Best practice
• Identification
• Removal
• Research
• International leadership

These six strategies contain deliverables and outcomes that Federal and State governments are working together to achieve.

The Importance Of Asbestos Awareness

Jeremy Trotman, JTA's Director + Principal Occupational Hygienist, says it makes sense that the Agency's 2017 Progress Report on the National Strategic Plan for Asbestos Management and Awareness focuses largely on asbestos awareness for several reasons:

• In our long experience with incidents involving asbestos the lack of factual knowledge regarding asbestos materials in the workplace can cause a major disruption to business operations resulting in significant time, financial and reputational cost
• Often the actual risk involved with an asbestos related incident is minimal. However, the perceptions of risk are elevated by unplanned and poorly managed events which could have been prevented altogether or managed with minimal disruption had the organisation developed better asbestos awareness.
• In nearly all cases, perceptions and risk are elevated where people poorly understand the risk, have been kept ignorant of the risk and/or where they felt they had no control over the risk

Improving asbestos awareness is a process of understanding the materials you have on site and properly training, informing and supervising everyone (including Contractors) in the knowledge competencies they need to understand the risks and risk controls.

SafeWork Australia states quite clearly that if you manage a workplace, you have a responsibility to protect anyone that works with asbestos. Asbestos Awareness training gives workers and supervisors the knowledge they need to identify and work safely with asbestos or asbestos containing material. Training will ensure your workers understand where asbestos might be found and what steps to take to stay safe.

Benefits Of Asbestos Awareness Training

• Better understanding of the risks of asbestos and control measures for existing hazards
• Avoiding moving or disturbing asbestos that has not been adequately identified
• Employees less likely to be exposed to potential contamination from asbestos fibres
• The creation of better risk assessments and control measures

Make sure you fulfil your responsibilities, keep your workers safe and avoid production downtime by ensuring that all your staff receive suitable Asbestos Awareness training and are alert to any asbestos risks.