subject: Workers Safety Represenattive,risk Assessment And The Italian Law [print this page] The Legislative Decree 81/08 artThe Legislative Decree 81/08 art. 29 defines how do the risk assessment. Paragraph 2 of that article says that the employer carries the risk assessment and develop its consultation document of the / of RLS. After means that consultation must take place before or during the evaluation process. The first step is therefore to formally ask to be consulted. The most challenging task for the RLS is surely to ensure that all risks are assessed for all / workers and concealers. First, the document must be well defined criteria used to perform the assessment, technical standards and any subsequent measurements of exposure levels made.
For example in the document can not be written generically that the noise hazard is low at a specified location without appropriate measure with instruments and methods defined by reference to technical standards and exposure limits considered by the laws or standards of good practice. But above all the contribution RLS should be formed by knowledge workers on the timing and mode of exposure for each location and compared with those expressed by the employer.
A good way to actively contribute to risk assessment, or to check its validity, is to build your own checklist and the risk that is believed to be in the company and check if the document were all addressed and in what way.
There are many internet checklist already proposed for the various employment sectors (a list is fairly exhaustive site ISPESL www.ispesl.it documents section).
May be useful to try to build their own following a general pattern * inserting the various risks at their workplace (for every position and / or location) and consulting fellow workers.
The risk assessment should include analysis of the accident register and pay particular attention to sentinel events, ie incidents that do not have resulted in significant damage, they can also expose serious risk situations that need to be changed.
Similar consideration should be given to the results of medical examinations which, in the presence of chemicals risk, must be given in the document risk assessment, in view of the fact that without knowing the damage we can not evaluate the dangers, or to Sentinel events related to occupational diseases or work-related factors in particular new venture (ergonomic, allergic, chemical, organizational, etc.).
It is important to remember that risk assessment must take account of gender differences (that must be taken into consideration different reference limits in case of working men or women) and, in the workplace are women, the evaluation document risk must indicate whether each task can be used in pregnancy or childbirth workers.
Moreover, a proper risk assessment in addition to analyzing individual workstations and identify risks and defines the seriousness and program the necessary technical measures to reduce the size.
