The AIOH is continuing to advocate heavily for preventative approach to managing occupational disease. As you will have seen from the multiple calls for submission have recently put out, we are actively seeking opportunities to contribute to the development of guidelines and strategies.  These include contributions to:

  • Weld Australia technical paper on control of fume- Andrew Orfanos has attended the multidisciplinary team meetings of this group and is collating member comment;
  • NSW dust disease board enquiry- Andrew Orfanos and Martin Jennings attended this enquiry and gave submissions on behalf of the AIOH.  You can see the recording at Insert photo or link
  • Queensland OIR- Code of practice for the managing respirable crystalline silica dust exposure in the stone benchtop industry- Ross Di Corleto and Simon Worland were part of this working group and contributed to the inclusion of good occupational hygiene practice into this code of practice.
  • National dust disease task force- call for submissions on their consultation have been invited and the external affairs committee chair, Martin Jennings will collate responses.  We have been invited to present to the next meeting of the dust diseases board on 20th November;
  • Australian Engineered Stone Advisory Group- accreditation process.  AESAG have announced an accreditation process for workshops wanting to purchase engineered stone.  We are still in discussion with them about how we can contribute to the awareness and education program that is needed to compliment this accreditation process.

As part of our strategy for advocacy and influence the AIOH have committed to promoting the profession nationally and internationally.  The second IOHA biannual face to face board meeting  for 2019 was held on September 8th in Bali in conjunction with the NAR committee meeting. Overall it was a very interesting board meeting.  It was interesting to hear that both IOHA and many of our sister organisations are facing the same challenges as us in terms of recognition, resources and funding and engagement of with other professional groups.  Lots of opportunity for us to share learnings and definitely an opportunity for us to involve more of our members in international and IOHA activities.

A focus of the NAR committee continues to be to promote alignment with ISO 17024 (2012): Conformity assessment — General requirements for bodies operating certification of persons.  More details will be provided as this project progresses.

 

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