We're always talking about workplace health and safety on this blog, but most of the news stories we look at concern physical injuries: severed fingers, broken bones, that sort of thing.

However, stats suggest that the greatest threat to the health and safety of Britain's workers is not rotating blades, slippery surfaces, unprotected edges, or anything like that.

According to the Trades Union Congress (TUC), which surveyed roughly one thousand health and safety representatives across the UK, the main concern for this country's H&S officials in 2016 was... stress! More...

Last week, we looked at the Alton Towers rollercoaster crash that has been in the news recently and asked what could be learned from the accident that resulted in a number of serious injuries and a multi-million pound fine for park owners Merlin Entertainments.

Probably the single most important takeaway from this mess concerns the importance of risk assessments. Paul Paxton, the lawyer who represented the injured parties in court, criticised Merlin's "catastrophic failure to assess risk" in a statement to the press, and it's hard not to agree with him; you can't help but wonder if the accident at Alton Towers could have been prevented with a more thorough assessment of possible dangers beforehand.

Of course, risk assessments are crucially important in any line of work - just because you're not working with rollercoasters and thrill rides doesn't mean that people can't get hurt on your premises! We at Label Source stock a range of risk assessment kits that will help you to carry out a thorough assessment of all the possible hazards in your workplace. Available kits include:

• Workplace Risk Assessment Kit - This general risk assessment kit (pictured above) is ideal for identifying and minimising hazards in any work environment.
   
• COSHH Risk Assessment Kit - This kit specifically deals with threats posed by hazardous substances and chemicals.
   
• Fire Risk Assessment Kit - This kit is great for assessing fire safety on your premises.
   
• Manual Handling Risk Assessment Kit - Manual handling can be dangerous! Prevent accidents and injuries with this risk assessment kit.
   
• Display Screen Equipment Risk Assessment Kit - This kit will help you to ensure the safe, healthy use of computer equipment at work.

Click here to see our full collection of risk assessment kits.

Many people have been seriously injured - or worse - while performing routine maintenance on machinery that should have been perfectly safe. Isolating your machines using the correct lockout procedures minimises the risk of unexpected start-ups while maintenance work is in progress, protecting the lives and wellbeing of those doing the work.

Here at Label Source, we sell a range of maintenance tags to help you identify machinery and equipment that, for safety purposes, should not be used. With clear instructions like 'Do not use' and 'Do not start - men working on machine', our maintenance tags are ideal for locking out heavy machinery during services and repairs (although we also stock labels that warn of high voltages, poisons, harmful gases, and other hazards).

In case you're not convinced of how important maintenance tags can be, here's just one example of what can happen when machines aren't properly 'tagged out' while maintenance work takes place. In November 2005, two men in Lanarkshire, Scotland were cleaning the inside of an animal feed mixer when the machine started up unexpectedly and killed them both. The HSE investigated this incident and found that it could have been "easily prevented" if the machine had been properly isolated:

"The process of isolation means establishing a break in the power supply, normally by using a lockable switch, and then securing the switch in the 'off' position using a padlock to prevent it being switched back on until the work is finished." - John Madden, HSE Inspector, speaking in 2008

Once you have completed the lockout process described above, it's important to use a maintenance tag to label the locked machinery and inform other workers that the machine is not to be used (most maintenance tags leave space to explain why the machine is locked out).

The incident you just read about resulted - full story here - in a total fine of £63,750 for the two companies involved, but far more importantly, it led to two deaths that could easily have been prevented. Click here to browse our maintenance tag range, and don't let the same thing happen on your watch!

We often talk about health and safety horror stories on this blog, and the health and safety horror story of the past year has without a doubt been the fallout from the rollercoaster crash at Alton Towers last summer.

In case you've somehow missed the media's coverage of this horrible accident, here's a brief recap: on the 2nd of June, 2015, a carriage carrying 16 people crashed into another (empty) carriage on a rollercoaster called The Smiler at the Alton Towers theme park in Staffordshire. Five people were seriously injured, and two of them - Vicky Balch and Leah Washington - ended up losing a leg each. Merlin Entertainments, the company that owns and operates the Alton Towers park, was investigated and taken to court over the incident, and last week a judge at Stafford crown court ordered them to pay a fine of £5 million.

There really are no winners here: Alton Towers have lost a lot of business in addition to the huge fine, and two young women were forced to undergo life-changing amputations that no amount of compensation will undo. However, a slender silver lining may be found in the possibility that this horrific incident and the ensuing media attention and court ruling may serve as a stern warning to other businesses (as well as to Merlin Entertainments themselves going forward). Paul Paxton, the lawyer who represented Balch and Washington in court, put it well in a statement outside the court after the judge's verdict had been delivered:

"My clients...have been shocked and disappointed by [Merlin's] catalogue of errors.The list goes on and on: the catastrophic failure to assess risk, the inadequate training, inadequate supervision, inadequate management, failure to communicate, failure to put in place safe systems of work. But this has not been about retribution; this has been about finding out why this accident happened and making sure that lessons have been learned, not just by Merlin but by others throughout the industry."

With that in mind, here's what businesses of all sizes in all sectors can learn from this case:

1. The Value of Risk Assessments

The judge at Stafford crown court ruled that Merlin's aforementioned "catastrophic failure to assess risk" was largely to blame for the Smiler incident. Risk assessments are important in every line of work; whether your workers are maintaining rollercoasters or moving boxes, you as a business owner are legally required to carry out a thorough risk assessment in order to identify any and all health and safety hazards that may exist in the working environment you're providing.

2. Putting in Place Safe Systems of Work

Spotting potential risks is just the first step towards total safety. After you've completed your risk assessment, you need to compose and implement a safe system of work that's designed to prevent accidents and injuries from occurring.

3. The Importance of Safety Training

Once you've identified possible risks and put a system in place to neutralise them, it's crucial that you train your staff to work within that system. It's all well and good coming up with a plan to minimise safety risks, but it won't help anyone unless the people on the ground are trained to put it into action!

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As some of you may already know, this week is Fire Door Safety Week in the UK. This year, the team are seeking to raise awareness of the critical role that accurately installed and maintained fire doors play, in providing passive fire protection to commercial, public and multiple occupancy buildings. According to their official website, around 3 million new fire doors are bought and installed in the UK every year, which may sound like good news at first, but does not accurately represent the standard of safety upheld across the country. In reality, many fire doors fail to receive the maintenance they need to function safely, often left defective and damaged by a lack of care or poor installation.

In order to raise awareness of this common problem, and highlight its existence in public buildings across the country, Theodore Firedoor went undercover and collected video evidence on behalf of IFSEC Global, in order expose cases of neglect.

In the videos which can be viewed here, Theodore visits a hospital and newly built school - two buildings that would rely heavily on the ability to confine a blaze to certain areas for as long as possible, in the event of a fire. Both cases revealed a range of maintenance and installation issues, from faulty closures to missing 'Fire Door Keep Locked' signs. One of the most concerning issues of all, was the fact that the gaps between doors were well in excess of the fire door safety recommendations, which means that they would fail to prevent the passage of poisonous smoke in the event of a fire.

This footage demonstrated not only how common this issue can be, but also how often it arises in areas we wouldn't expect. When you think about workplaces and areas of vital public importance, such as hospitals, you would expect health and safety issues to be at the very top of their priority list. Sadly, the evidence shows that this is not the case in many instances, seemingly due to a lack of proper care and attention. Anyone who has even the slightest idea about proper health and safety practices, knows that it is not a one-off process, and that there are no fail-proof solutions to preventing everyday dangers. To provide the highest level of protection and confidence in health and safety measures, they must be assessed on a regular basis, in order to ensure that they are functioning to the correct standards for a valuable impact.

In order to ensure that fire doors do provide the correct level of protection, those responsible for installing and maintaining these measures should follow these four simple steps:

Step 1: Conduct a thorough assessment of the property, to identify where fire doors are needed.

Step 2: Install safety doors using a reputable and and certified supplier, before conducting another assessment once the work is completed, to ensure that the doors meet official safety standards.

Step 3: Ensure that fire doors are marked with the correct signs, to ensure that employees, occupants and other members of the public, are properly informed of how they should be used and maintained.

Step 4: Conduct regular checks of the fire doors, using the checklist provided by Fire Door Safety Week here, ensuring that a FDIS inspector is contacted if there is an area of concern.

For more fire safety stories and advice, here.