Lennon Training

What is an Acceptable Level?

Published 04 May 2011

Explosion protection barriers in a Chinese coal mine. Supplies ready to go underground

What is an Acceptable Level? State Legislation for Occupational Health and Safety covering all industries is built upon the notion of not having any person in a workplace exposed to an unacceptable level of risk, The legislation for coal mining mimics the OH&S legislation. So how does a person determine what constitutes an ‘acceptable’ and what constitutes an ‘unacceptable’ level? In the case of our coal mining industry the Coal Mining Safety and Health Regulations sets out the ways that acceptable levels of risk can be achieved in most matters of coal mine operations. Signing up to work at a coal mine places us under an obligation to follow those Regulations or be penalised. Fortunately there are the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) required by the Regulations which sets out in some detail what we must learn and follow for each coal mine we work at. There is a huge obligation placed upon every coal mine worker to adhere to the SOP’s when they sign accepting the job on the mine site. Whilst we work to acceptable levels of risk in our job, we quite often do not consider the levels of risk when away from work. You need only consider the statistics from the State’s major hospitals where they treat more industrial type injuries that occur out of the workplace then injuries incurred in the workplace! Is that acceptable?