Posted By David Allan
Karl,

Thanks for raising this point - I am a member of the Steering Committee and I can assure you that it is quite active in promoting integration of environmental duties for practitioners and not an academic talking shop. With a hefty specialist group membership we are in the process of working through our 2001 plan which is largely based on fedback from the initial memberhip survey.

We recognise that there is a resistance for many practitioners to become involved in the environment, but like it or lump it many of are "stitched" with it. Whatever the outcome, most risk assessments etc need to take account of potential environmental impacts, ie in the workplace, not a business environmental impact, which unless a simple process would best be left to Environmental experts.

We also recognise that it can be an exceptionally complex area and as practitioners we need to understand what shade of green we are aiming to be and where competence ends. This then would be over to another organisation eg IEMA, of which many H&S practitioners are members.

We are also looking at helping assess training needs for organisations so far as the environment is concerned, it sounds straightforward but believe me is exceptionally complicated, because you have correctly idenetified there are so many "players".

So yes please, more environmental questions on this forum.

David Allan