The Dangers

When asbestos fibres are inhaled in large quantities you significantly increase your chances of contracting one of four life changing diseases. These consist of mesothelioma (always fatal), lung cancer (almost always fatal), asbestosis (low chance of fatality but often very debilitating) and diffuse pleural thickening (not fatal). These diseases won’t necessarily affect you immediately and will often appear later in life. It is important to note that asbestos that is undisturbed cannot cause you any harm, it is only dangerous when its fibres are broken apart and inhaled.

Who’s at risk?

In general, anyone that is likely to disturb asbestos in their normal everyday work life will be at risk. In particular, this relates to people whose profession deals with the inner workings of any structure that was built before the year 2000. Examples of such professions include plumbers, roofers, joiners, architects, electricians, building surveyors, demolition workers, gas fitters, plasterers, and construction workers.

Asbestos Awareness Training

If you or your employees fall into anyone of the at-risk categories then it vitally important that they receive proper asbestos awareness training from a qualified professional. For those affected asbestos awareness will fall under the rubric of health and safety training. The training itself will teach workers the best procedures in how to avoid the risks associated with asbestos and how to properly protect themselves.

There are additional levels of training that you can receive depending on the work that you intend to carry out. In particular, it falls into two categories, non-licensable and licensed asbestos work training. Non licensable training is directed at workers who may knowingly disturb lower risk asbestos containing materials (drilling holes, laying cables, removing tiles ect.). During these courses you will learn about waste handling procedures, how to make suitable risk assessments, and safe work practices. If you intend to work with high risk asbestos containing materials then you must be a licensed contractor. Your employees will need to have additional training and use the appropriate respiratory protective equipment.

Due to the dangers of asbestos, refresher training should be carried out every year to further ensure your work force is continually following the best practices available.

The website for this campaign, Infi-Knit is where 5093 people submitted 127.32 metres of scarf! Through an easy submission box at the bottom, visiters were encouraged to write “what makes me feel warm” – the Knit-Bot then converted that into a knitting patterns and added it to the scarf – they have had 2 webcams operational so you could watch it as it added your contribution to the scarf.

One of the goals of the campaign is to raise awareness of the problem of Fuel Poverty, not only to the Government – which is one of the many places it’ll be raising awareness – but right now it is on its way to the North Pole and you can track its journey here.

The problems revolve around the so-called ‘man bag’. Fortunately ‘man bag’ is not an anatomical euphemism, but instead refers to any kind of single strapped bag carried by a man. These apparently fall short of conventional standards of masculinity, because, you know bags are for girls and stuff.

The British Chiropractic Association has found that the average weight of a single strapped bag carried by a man exceeds six kilograms. More than half of men carry some kind of bag daily, but they risk causing an prolonging back and shoulder pain.

Work reasons account for a lot of the necessity of carrying weighty bags. In the 21st century as at work, never at home culture, toting a laptop about to keep up with work on the go is increasingly being seen as the norm. Employers should perhaps be wary of the possibility of being subject to back injury claims should they force their employees to lug about too much.

So what can be done to guard against injury? One obvious answer is to avoid the use of single strapped bags altogether. You may feel less than fashionable dragging a granny’s tartan trolley down the street, but remember while the taunts of children at bus stops will fade away, the pain from a wonky back could live with you for a while.

The other alternative may be to be less metrosexual. The Mail article that has raised the alarm on this does not mention that the non metrosexual gentlemen among us are at any kind of risk at all. Non-metrosexual troops are required to carry bags weighing an average of 91lb.

Recently we picked up from this cycling community feed which included the following article about pot holes and the law. Bearing in mind the recent extreme weather it seemed worth talking about as the local autorities are still trying hard to catch up with the back log of making repairs to these hazzards after last year’s terrible winter weather. The general state of Britain’s roads remains poor – According to the 2009 Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance Survey (ALARM)  there’s a thirteen year road repair backlog caused by under funding and neglect.

Potholes are particularly dangerous and regularly cause cyclists to lose control of their bikes. This can result in damage to the bike and, more seriously, injuries to the biker. In such cases cyclists may be able to bring a successful claim against the highway authority.

You help other cyclists avoid having accidents by reporting  potholes that are a danger to all road users – causing damage and injury.  For special cases share your potholes and submit details and images to http://www.potholesnews.co.uk/ o which we read:

a cyclist hit a pothole in the city that left him in a wheelchair for 6 months with a broken hip. He recieved a payout of £10,000 for his injuries out of public coffers which could have been used to fix approximately 142 potholes!

Not all solicitors are experts in personal injury claims, particularly those claims involving cycle accidents. Your local high street solicitor may not be best suited to represent you.

Access Legal is a website that offers help with personal injury claims run by Shoosmiths – a UK based firm of solicitors that specialise in personal injury claims

In an effort to help cyclist stay safe Shoosmiths Solicitors on their Legal Access website have produced various free guides including a pdf download Safer Cycling which offers some helpful reminders about general maintenance and day to day cycling for both adults and children as well as some suggestions how to stay safer when riding in groups.

Recently we picked up from this cycling community feed which included the following article about pot holes and the law. Bearing in mind the recent extreme weather it seemed worth talking about as the local autorities are still trying hard to catch up with the back log of making repairs to these hazzards after last year’s terrible winter weather. The general state of Britain’s roads remains poor – According to the 2009 Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance Survey (ALARM)  there’s a thirteen year road repair backlog caused by under funding and neglect.

Potholes are particularly dangerous and regularly cause cyclists to lose control of their bikes. This can result in damage to the bike and, more seriously, injuries to the biker. In such cases cyclists may be able to bring a successful claim against the highway authority.

You help other cyclists avoid having accidents by reporting  potholes that are a danger to all road users – causing damage and injury.  For special cases share your potholes and submit details and images to http://www.potholesnews.co.uk/ o which we read:

a cyclist hit a pothole in the city that left him in a wheelchair for 6 months with a broken hip. He recieved a payout of £10,000 for his injuries out of public coffers which could have been used to fix approximately 142 potholes!

Not all solicitors are experts in personal injury claims, particularly those claims involving cycle accidents. Your local high street solicitor may not be best suited to represent you.

Access Legal is a website that offers help with personal injury claims run by Shoosmiths – a UK based firm of solicitors that specialise in personal injury claims

In an effort to help cyclist stay safe Shoosmiths Solicitors on their Legal Access website have produced various free guides including a pdf download Safer Cycling which offers some helpful reminders about general maintenance and day to day cycling for both adults and children as well as some suggestions how to stay safer when riding in groups.

Clean water and decent public sanitation are things which, we, in the developed world, pretty much tend to take for granted; getting potable water is as simple as turning on a tap, it’s something which most of us do many times a day without even thinking about it.
So, maybe it’s all too easy for us to forget that we are, in fact, extremely fortunate to have such ready access to such a vital luxury!

In the third world it’s a very different story! Approximately 4,000 children die every day from preventable water related diseases

4,000!
That’s more than the combined effects of HIV/AIDS, malaria and measles!

It’s just mind bloggling, that this is still going on in the 21_st century!

Please, if you can take the time to do something, if not today, then tomorrow, or the next day; If you can afford it then even a few quid can make a hell of a difference! Part of what makes water poverty such a huge scandel is that providing clean water doesn’t cost the earth!
Even if you can’t afford to make a donation, then take a few minutes to write something, to help raise awareness, on your own blog, or forums you frequent. Help spread the word, even if it’s just mentioning it to your mates while you’re out having a few this weekend.
For all that it’s a massive problem, the solution is relatively simple & if we all pitch in then it shouldn’t be too much of an imposition, in terms of either time or money, for anybody.

If nothing else, please, take the time to sign the petition below, let the politicians know that this is an important issue!

It’s actually a bit of a fund raising phenonomen, Marathons in other parts of the world don’t have nearly such a strong philanthropic ethos as the London Marathon, which has had charitable status since before it’s first race was even run, & is now the world’s biggest annual one day charitable fund raising event. Last year’s participants raised £47.2 million, & it’s expected that the 2010 London Marathon‘s 36,000 runners will raise at least as much, if not even more!

The London Marathon is a major charitable fund raising event, as well as being a sporting spectacle

Marathons, as a sporting event, are actually a relatively recent invention. When the modern Olympics were established in 1896 the organisers wanted an event which would tie the games with their classical Greek counterpart, &, with those first games being held in Athens, the idea of an event inspired by an important episode in ancient Athenian history obviously seemed the way to go.
The historical derivation comes from the Battle of Marathon, which was fought between the Athenians and the Persians, in 490 BC, during the first Persian invasion of Greece. The Athenians won the battle, and, in the process, also halted the Persian invasion, that much is historical fact.
However there is also a legend that, following the battle, the soldier Pheidippides was ordered to return to Athens, with news of the victory, as quickly as possible. The story tells that he ran all the way back to Athens, without a break, burst into the Athenian Assembly, and managed to gasp out news of the victory, before collapsing and dying.
There’s a fair degree of doubt over whether this part of the story is true. Various Greek writers give differing names for the runner, plus it’s also recorded that the Athenian army forced march back to the city, on the same day as the battle, to guard against the possibility of a naval assault by the Persians. Details which seem to cast doubt on whether there ever was a Pheidippides, or whether such an epic feat would be required to deliver news of the victory to his countrymen.

In any case, the most likely route from Marathon to Athens was calculated as being approximately 26 miles, and this was the distance which was set as the length of the modern Marathon race. During the early years the exact distance of the race was left with the organisers of each individual Olympics. The modern distance of 26 miles 385 yards only became a standard from the 1924 Olympics onwards, although it was first used during the 1908 London Olympics, on which occasion the extra 385 yards were added to the course to ensure that the finishing line was in front of the Royal Box, in the Great White City Stadium.

It also quite clearly reveals that the govts objections to cannabis and ectasy seem to come down to “drugs are illegal because they’re bad, and they’re bad because they’re illegal”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that these drugs are 100% harmless, but if an expert, whose job it is to know, is stating that they’re less harmful than substances which are legal and freely available then surely that has to be a pretty good arguement for their legalisation?
OK, you could take the opposite tack and say that maybe tobacco and alcohol should be made illegal instead, but apart from being a non-starter in terms of getting the populace to accept such a move, not to mention how much it would cost the exchequer in terms of lost duty, there comes a point where govt has to butt out and let people make their own choices (and take responsibility for them) even if there is some risk involved; Else we’ll eventually end up as a society of joyless wage slaves whose only purpose is to be good little workers. I mean, if you want to start talking about banning anything which is dangerous then lets start by looking at privately owned vehicles; how many deaths and injuries do they cause each year on our roads? By contrast we’re talking about cannabis & ectasy, susbstances which routinely kill less people each year than bed related misadventures!

There’s also the fact that history has shown that prohibition doesn’t work, where someone stands to make a profit you’ll just get a black market economy spring up to meet consumer demand for prohibited goods. As things stand in this country millions of otherwise perfectly law abiding, productive members of society are criminalised because they want, and choose, to smoke cannabis. If the govt truly represented the people they’d accept that for most users cannabis is a relatively benign substance with minimal knock on effects for wider society, and they’d legalise it.
Yes I said legalise it, forget decriminalisation, although it’s often touted as an acceptable method for govt to look the other way and quietly accept that maybe cannabis isn’t such an evil drug after all, decriminalisation is in fact the worst of both worlds from a societal point of view. Users are still forced to interact with the black market, organised criminals, in order to get the stuff, and this has a number of wider implications. It means that there aren’t any safe guards on quality, no product information in terms of the strength of any particular batch, and most importantly of all, money spent on cannabis is going to support organised crime!
On the other hand if it were legalised these issues could all be eliminated; users could be sure they knew what they were getting, and wouldn’t be funding criminals, but on the contrary could be providing revenue for govt.

At a time when we’re being told that, due to the banking bail out, our country is going to be in debt for decades to come you’d think that the govt might be open to new means of raising revenue. The Home Office estimates that in 2006 the UK drug trade was worth between £3.5 and £5.8 billion, not enough to solve the country’s money woes, but getting a slice of any figure which is measured in the billions isn’t to be sniffed at!

Really it seems like a no brainer to me. Now that “the genie’s out of the bottle” it’s never going away, people are going to take these drugs, they’ll find a way to get them because someone else can make money from supplying them. When even the experts are saying that dope is less harmful than substances which society already makes freely available, why can’t the govt just get over the outdated dogma that “drugs are bad m’kay” and do the thing which would benefit everbody except the organised criminals?

This piece in the New Scientist lays out the wider picture, in terms of the govt’s rocky relationship with it’s own Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. There’s also a petition running on the No. 10 site here, if you want to join the call to re-instate Dr Nutt.

Over the course of the past eight years’ annual national blood pressure Testing Weeks, held in the second week of September every year, over a 1.5 million people have had their blood pressure measured for free.

The campaign has been so successful that the campaign was a winner at The Charity Awards 2008 for its work on the Awareness Week.

Health professionals, including pharmacists, nurses and occupational health officers, will run well over a thousand official venues which have signed up  to offer free blood pressure checks during the event, on behalf of the charity to help test the nation’s blood pressure and educate people about what their numbers mean.

Are You 1 in 3?

This year’s theme asks  ‘Could you be the 1 in 3?’.  One in three adults has high blood pressure and it’s the biggest cause of death and disability in the UK through the strokes and heart attacks it causes – and although reports of recent research has lead some healthcare advisors to encourage everyone to take blood pressure lowering drugs it is still vital that people have their readings taken regularly in oreder to detect any increases early.

When & where can I be tested?

The awareness week runs from 7-13 September 2009. To find out where you can have your readings taken visit this page and enter your town or postcode to find the nearest venues and opening times.

Healthcare Appeal

On the run up top the event BBC Radio 4 will broadcast actor Timothy West highlighting the tragic consequences of undetected high blood pressure and describing his own experience of the condition in a special broadcast on the  Radio 4 appeals page

What should I do if I have a raised reading?

If you have a raised reading, don’t panic. It may mean that you have high blood pressure, or it may be a one-off raised reading. The important thing is visit your GP to have it checked again to find out more. If your GP diagnoses you with high blood pressure, it can be treated and controlled, through changes to your lifestyle and, for some people, also with medication.

Diagnosis of High BP

High blood pressure cannot be diagnosed after a one-off reading.  If the first reading is raised, it is recommend that  a follow-up check with a GP is done soon afterwards.

Measure Blood Pressure at Home

The purpose of the week is not only to identify those with high blood pressure but to educate and empasise the imprtance of  regularly getting your blood pressure checked – as a result more and more people are buying home monitors and following correct procedures to measure their blood pressure at home – studies show that measuring at home more accurately reflects your true readings. No longer do you need to use the old fashioned cumbersome sphygmomanometers and  take awkward, inaccurate readings with a stethoscope – there are many affordable clinically validated automatic monitors on sale to the public.