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

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.

We've told you before about the gruesome accidents that can occur when somebody is working on a machine and somebdoy else switches the machine on. Limbs and even lives have been lost because people sometimes don't think before activating potentially hazardous equipment.

Fortunately, there is a way to prevent accidents like this: maintenance tags! Service personnel can attach these semi-rigid plastic tags to the machines they're working on, letting everybody else know that those machines are not to be used until further notice.

Proper use of these labels can quite literally be a lifesaver. Far too many maintenance personnel have been killed by the machines they work on, and a number of these deaths might have been prevented if the maintenance work had been more clearly signposted. If, for example, you went home tonight and saw a 'Do Not Start - Men Working on Machine' tag on your oven, would you switch it on?

We sell a range of maintenance tags here at Label Source; each one gives clear instructions (e.g. 'Do Not Operate', 'Do Not Open Valve'), and some are designed to warn of more specific hazards, such as high voltages, poisonous gas, and asbestos dust.

Click here to see our full range of maintenance tags - they could save somebody's life!

Machines make our lives a lot easier, but they can also be extremely hazardous if used improperly. We've seen lots of gruesome reports in the news lately that reinforce this fact - here are some of the worst:

Warning! These stories contain injury and mutilation - do not read if you are faint of heart!

• A 60-year-old woman from Cheshire lost part of her left index finger because the machine she was cleaning had not been switched off. Her finger was caught in the machine's rotating blades; her employer, Tattenhall Dairy Products Ltd, was fined £7,500 for failing to prevent the incident.


• Roger Small, a 49-year-old man from Staffordshire, was repairing a computer-controlled machine last year when the machine started working and Small's arm became trapped in the inner workings. His arm was broken, and Key Precisions Ltd - the company Mr Small worked for at the time - were handed an £8,000 fine (plus costs).


• A worker in Glasgow needed a metal plate in his wrist after an accident involving a conveyer belt. The man's arm was caught between the belt and a roller; the HSE took his employer to court over the incident, stating that safety guards should have been put in place to prevent workers accessing the machine's 'nip point'.


• Poorly-guarded machinery was also responsible for injuring an unnamed 30-year-old from Tyne and Wear. The man's hand was left severely injured after he attempted to swap two feed belts and got his finger trapped in the machine, which was running at the time of the incident.

If you want to keep unpleasant incidents like these from occurring in your workplace, there are a number of safety measures you must take. Firstly, you should ensure that all workers are properly trained in the safe use of hazardous machinery; secondly, you need to make sure that all machinery is properly labelled with the appropriate hazard safety signs.