Posted By Andrew Humphriss I was intrested to read the discussions on sharps injuries through the iosh discussion forum; I am a Unison safety representative and work for Warwickshire Police as Police Staff. Our branch of Unison are involved in a campaign to raise awareness and safe handling of sharps and syringes,this being part of Unison's national neddlestick campaign, which in my opinion is aimed at health service workers where some 100,000 needlestick injuries are reported each year. We beleive the campaign should include all Public Service workers including Police/ Police Staff, who daily put them seleves at risk from injuries from syringes and sharps when handling prisoners and property. I our case recently a Police Officer injured hinself with a used syring while searching property of a known heroin user, this raises a lot of issues and proves the worth of our campaign, which is to raise awarness as to the risks, around safe handling, storage, first aid etc. Our branch have an idea of producing a graphic handbook or poster to raise these points, we are looking for ideas from members, if you can help please contact me Andrew.Humphriss@warwickshire.pnn.police.uk

Posted By smudge Andrew I am a Health and safety advisor for the Fire service and a member of the execututive for our branch. we also have major problems with Hypodermic needles, usually in void properties used by drug takers. We have insructed our operational staff not to touch the needles and we have agreements with the seven councils that employ us to remove them when we notify them. This agreement works very well except for derelict private properties when we have to rely on the police to enable entry. If inadvertantly one of our staff receives needlstick injuries then we have a medical and counciling service

Posted By Sean Fraser Interestingly, the Ampel Probe website: http://www.ampelprobe.com/index.html suggests you either call them or send a letter, with no e-mail contact! If anyone is keen to follow this up, give them a call and ask if they have an approved UK or EU distributor. You might only be able to buy them in the US now, although the website claims they are sold worldwide to a variety of bodies.