Important Date for Asbestos Workers and Managers Diaries

With the New Year well and truly in progress, we are rapidly approaching an important date that all managers and workers dealing with asbestos should be aware of. As part of the updates to the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, and following on from the requirement to briefly document each job with records of workers involved and levels of likely exposure, there are new medical conditions to consider.

By April 2015, all workers/self-employed workers undertaking notifiable non-licensed work with asbestos must be under health surveillance by a doctor. Workers who are already under health surveillance for licensed work need not have another medical examination for non-licensed work. BUT medicals for notifiable non-licensed work are not acceptable for those doing licensed work.

This is the last of the updates to the original regulations to come into effect, but it will require comprehensive record keeping to ensure compliance. The remainder of the regulations remain broadly the same, emphasising the need for training of operatives and the importance of correctly face fitted respiratory protection and other PPE as well correct cleaning and disposal methods.

C&D Training Division are fully equipped to provide training on all these subjects, further details can be had by emailing us or by calling 01902 686363.

New C&D Consultant Brent Gill shares his thoughts

Readers of this site will know that Brent Gill has recently joined C&D to bolster our on site team and he is currently working at Stone on a project for long time C&D customer Humphries Demolition.

As part of the changes to C&D in 2014 we will be including regular website articles from all of our team on topics of their choice and the first of those articles has been submitted by Brent and is published over on our training site at www.demolitiontraining.com

Brent, being a Formula 1 fan, has reflected upon the awful accident to Michael Schumacher and his thoughts can be seen over on our sister site.

Can demolition labourers remove asbestos products?

We often get emails asking if demolition labourers can remove asbestos based products and we answer Yes and No as it depends on the products.

Demolition labourers cannot remove notifiable asbestos products such as Flock, Limpet sprayed coatings, insulation in any form, insulation boards and debris from those products as that is a job for licensed asbestos removal contractors.

However, providing that the labourers have passed a CAT B asbestos training course (details of this course can be found at our Demolition Training website) and have the right rpe, ppe and equipment, then they can remove non notifiable products such as asbestos cement goods, asbestos cement roof sheets, asbestos papers, asbestos based felts, toilet cisterns, artex and paint coatings.

Don't take risks with asbestos, make sure the team are trained to deal with it, have the correct rpe and ppe and the disposal is as CAR2012.