Would you put your phone in a cement mixer?
British phone retailer Tuffphones has unveiled a new range of hard-wearing handsets aimed at construction workers and outdoors enthusiasts.
It’s the latest addition to a range of extra-durable Android devices in the growing market for rugged phones.
The BBC took them to a building site to try them out.
Construction giants De Walt and Cat licence similar rugged handsets, which are subject to more rigorous testing than ordinary smartphones.
Jaguar Land Rover has also announced a partnership with phone manufacturer Bullitt Group and says it intends to launch a smartphone with a “combination of durability and elegance” in 2017.
To Continue Reading on the BBC Website, Click HERE
HSE investigating after man dies in nightclub fire
The HSE has begun a joint investigation with police after a man died in hospital earlier this week from burns injuries after a fire at a nightclub in south-east London.
The fire broke out at Studio 338 on Boord Street, Greenwich, at about midday on Monday and spread to a nearby industrial warehouse and a scrap paper processing yard containing a number of outbuildings. More than 100 firefighters tackled the blaze.
The man, 28, has not been formally identified but has been named by the nightclub as an employee called Tomas. He was airlifted to an east London hospital but died on Tuesday.
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Brexit: What Next for Health, Safety and Your Business?
The UK has voted to leave the EU. A period of uncertainty has commenced but nothing has changed legally. The UK’s position within the EU will remain the same until Article 50 is triggered and the ‘extraction process’ begins.
The extraction process will no doubt bring about change. Susan Dearden, Gowling WLG, looks at how might this impact on Health and Safety and your business.
The core legislation, is the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (the HSWA). While technically post-dating entry to the EU in 1973, the HSWA was the amalgamation of a mass of legislation and regulations that had previously existed but only generally applied to high risk industry sectors – mining, railways, factories, agriculture and nuclear, for example.
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Bringing Stress to Work Can Be Fatal
Stress is often discussed in relation to sickness absence. However, it’s less reported how it can endanger lives. Whether it is work-related stress or stress that people bring to work, stress can put at risk the safety of both employees and members of the public.
Matthew Holder, Head of Campaigns and Engagement at the British Safety Council, commented: “It is well documented that stress is a significant cause of sickness absence, undermining both productivity and profitability. What is less discussed is how stress can endanger lives. Evidence shows that stress significantly contributes to injuries in sectors such as construction, transport and agriculture. In the medical profession, stress is a major predictor of work-related accidents and there are strong links between fatigue and sharps injuries.
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Olympic Health And Safety: Record Breakers
When the most dangerous thing associated with a programme employing 12,000 staff and involving 80 million man hours over five years is a sandcastle, you know you’ve done a good job in terms of health and safety. While the 13 ft-by-6.5 ft sand sculpture on Weymouth beach – built to mark 100 days to go until the Games in April – had to be knocked down for health and safety reasons, the rest of the structures back in east London were standing firm. The London 2012 Olympics continue to be hailed as exemplar – the greenest, the fastest and, perhaps most importantly, the safest.
Over the 80 million hours worked on the big build, there has been an accident frequency rate (AFR) of just 0.15 and the AFR over the last 12 months has been 0.1 – the industry average is 3.4. And for the first time in Olympic construction history there has not been a fatality, a feat recognised last month by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (ROSPA), which presented the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) with an award for completing the big build without a single death.
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China’s Glass Walkway Opens In Tianmen Mountain
China’s newest glass-bottomed walkway is a real hair raiser.
Situated off the side of China’s Tianmen Mountain, the 100-meter-long, 1.6-meter-wide skywalk is situated high above Hunan’s Zhangjiajie National Forest Park. Dubbed the “Coiling Dragon Cliff” skywalk, the clear glass walkway overlooks a sheer drop that would turn any stomach.
Coiling Dragon Cliff looks out on Tianmen Tongtian Avenue, a road with 99 turns that switch back and forth up the mountainside. The road’s name translates to “avenue toward heaven.”
Photos show cautious tourists sticking by the mountainside, while more adventurous visitors pose for photos at the skywalk’s edge. After taking one look at this stomach-churning drop, we think we’ll stick to solid ground. Check out photos of the glass skywalk below, if you dare.
To Continue Reading on the Huffington Post Website, Click HERE
Viewpoint: The Waste Mountain Of Coffee Cups
Every day hundreds of thousands of Britons put their coffee cup into a recycling bin. They’re wrong – those cups aren’t recyclable, and the UK throws away 2.5bn of them a year. It must stop, writes Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
One chilly morning last March – exactly the sort of morning when a warming cafe latte could seem appealing – I took to the streets of London in a double-decker bus adorned with 10,000 empty takeaway coffee cups.
It might have looked like a piece of dodgy conceptual art, but it was actually designed to illustrate the vast volume of takeout cups we throw away daily in the UK.
My bus didn’t represent all of them, though – 10,000 is the number of cups the UK gets through in just two minutes.
To Continue Reading on the BBC Website, Click HERE