Everyone has the right to a safe working environment. If you are failing to ensure the continued safety and wellbeing of your employees, you could well be liable from a legal standpoint, and - more importantly - you may be putting people's lives at risk.

So, is your workplace up to health and safety standards? Here are 3 things to check:

Electrical Safety

Make sure that any electrical hazards in your workplace are properly marked with the appropriate safety signs. You should also label your electrical cables to minimise the risk of an incident. Ensure that all portable electrical appliances have been PAT tested and are safe for use.

Fire Safety

Would you and your staff members be able to safely evacuate the premises in the event of a fire? Are your fire doors clearly labelled and kept shut at all times? Does your building have easily accessible emergency exits, and if so, are they clearly signposted? Will your fire equipment be easy to locate and use in an emergency situation?

Personal Protection

Some workplaces - such as construction sites - require the use of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment). As the site owner, you must provide your workers with the necessary safety equipment (e.g. hard hats, goggles, breathing apparatus); you must also enforce the proper use of these items at all times and provide clear safety signs to inform people of any PPE requirements that apply to them.

You may remember that, two weeks ago, we shared a series of upsetting stories about people who had been injured/mutilated by the machines they worked with. Well, if you want to avoid incidents like that on your premises, our lockout tags are the solution you need.

These highly-visible yellow tags can be attached to machinery and equipment to warn staff that the item in question is being serviced and may not be used until the tag has been removed by authorised personnel. This ensures that:

• Service personnel won't get trapped in moving parts when a machine starts unexpectedly
   
• The risk of electrocution and electric shock is kept to a minimum
   
• No equipment is damaged through improper use

Each of our lockout tags has a hole for easy attachment, and many of the tags give room for a signature and date, allowing authorised personnel to identify themselves when using the tags. Click here to see our full range of safety lockout products

In the global economy, it is imperative that production, processes and services consistently meet the required standards to satisfy the expectations of customers. Anything less can lead to customers opting for your competitors as confidence in your company ebbs away, and as returns, rejects or reworking escalate.

Calibration and dimensional testing are the necessary requirement methods to make sure that your equipment, instruments, meters, gauges and tools accurately meet the measurement standards. Many are included in internationally recognised standards such as ISO 17025 (BS EN 17025: 2005 in the UK) and ISO 9001.

At the end of such tests, checks and verification, the visual guide to users is to affix a label or tag to confirm compliance that instruments will operate within tolerances. These labels can advise date of calibration, frequency of calibration, tests undertaken and traceability.

Our range of calibration labels, calibration tags and calibration dots have been used for tests relating to dimensional, electrical, humidity, pressure, thermal and torque, in diverse industrial sectors including aerospace, oil, gas, chemical, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, automotive, medical and telecommunications. In addition, other ranges are produced in other formats including write and seal, and those produced in aluminium foil, tamper evident or tamperproof vinyl.

Besides the standard calibration and test labels on offer, we have supplied many UKAS approved laboratories and test centres with custom produced marking product. These can include company logos, help desk numbers, service centre return address details, and serial numbering or barcoding to provide tracking and access to test records.

For further information please contact Label Source by e-mail (sales @labelsource.co.uk) or telephone 0800 3761693 (in UK), or +44 1443 842769 (outside UK) to discuss your requirements.

Love it or hate it, health and safety is a hot topic here in Great Britain. New stories - some silly, some very serious - emerge every week, and it can be difficult to stay abreast of everything that's happening in the mad, mad world of H&S from one week to the next.

Fortunately, we at Label Source are more than happy to do the hard work for you. Here are 5 stories that you may have missed this week:
 

• Fire safety regulations made the news on Wednesday after a London resident stumbled upon a two-foot high emergency exit (pictured above). While the tiny fire escape is more or less unusable unless you're crawling on your belly, the London Evening Standard pointed out that "there are no rules about the minimum height of a fire exit" (although fire safety regulations do stipulate minimum widths). To be fair, the diminutive door is labelled with a Fire Escape - Keep Clear sign, so the proprietors have clearly put some thought into their building's fire safety.
  
   
• With economy airlines attempting to widen their profit margins by squeezing more and more passengers onto their planes, concerns have been raised about the safety of their increasingly cramped cabins. Experts have stated that a lack of space could make it difficult for passengers to escape the plane or receive medical treatment in an emergency situation.
  
  
  
• Downton Abbey actor Hugh Bonneville has hit out at 'health and safety culture', which he believes is plaguing modern television production. "If someone is going to look into a mirror," he said, "you need to fill out a long risk assessment form about possible damage to their irises." Bonneville then pointed out that he was exaggerating, but did express his distaste for "acronyms, targets, hurdles, barriers and red tape", which he feels are an obstacle to "getting on with the job of making programmes".
  
  
  
• Sadly, we've yet another gruesome story to add to our machine safety blog post: The Health and Safety Executive this week shared the horrific report of a 19-year-old from Nottinghamshire whose forearm was severed in an assembly line accident in 2013. Mark Marshall was attempting to retrieve a glove from a conveyor belt when the accident happened; the firm he was working for at the time are now in court.
  
  
  
• Finally, a Nestlé factory in Burton has been hit with a health and safety improvement notice after HSE inspectors found a number of issues on the premises. One of the problems was "a lack of signage pointing towards emergency escape routes". Sounds like they need to visit our Fire Safety & Emergency Access department!

Photo from Vincento/Twitter.

In order to prevent workplace injury or death to operators, or damage to equipment mechanisms, use our safe condition range of emergency cut off labels and signs to clearly identify shut off points. Prompt action can minimise effects of accidents (such as entanglement or crush injuries) or destruction of machinery, by manually shutting down power to motors or valves. These cut off points can be activated to shut off electricity, gas or supply of fuel to operating equipment.

Our identification products have been used in a variety of industries to mark emergency cut off controls on industrial machinery, presses, heavy lifting equipment, fuel pumps, conveyors and escalators. Also, ranges of hazard warning signs are available, to inform machine users of operating dangers, and signs for shut off controls for supply of electricity, water and gas.