Posted By George Wedgwood
Karel, I am sure your employee is good at what he is doing or you would not have given him that job - if you are not sure maybe you could watch him at work for a short while a few times to make sure. Let's not go overboard on this but perhaps he needs to understand a few things about using such chemicals as well as the possible effects about skin contamination aerosol effects and what may result from it getting into the storm drains eventually. As employer, you can then give him a 'certificate' which will demonstrate that you have taken some interest in his work, ensured that he can do it diligently and is working to the datasheet controls recommended. It's really that easy and if I asked a contractor I would expect this type of 'self certification' for such a task. For a more difficult or risks task, I might also expect some evidence of external validation that a competence level had been demonstrated.

Remember that if you assure a client that your worker is 'competent' then you will be assuming some degree of liability or at least be responsible for justifying the certificate and the method of accreditation.

Hope this helps, George

Posted By Robert K Lewis
Karel

If you are in the UK please ignore George's advice altogether. Sovay has pointed you to the correct place. Pesticides include weedkillers and insecticides and any commercial application is covered by the regulations, as is domestic use to an extent.

One would hope that technical advice would have been more accurate in such an important area.

Bob

Posted By Robert K Lewis
Karel

The laisez faire approach is not actually advised in INDG 257. Note the para on Professional Users:

a professional user - the pesticide can only
be applied by people who have to use
pesticides as part of their work and who have
received appropriate training to enable them to
do this safely;

The term covers all persons at work and the term appropriate training does not, as I understand the regulations and its associated code, refer to an internal training course. It refers to a specific competency training under the auspices of the ministry of agriculture.

These regulations are not solely HSE enforced and the leaflet correctly refers to "appropriate training" as there are a number of different certificate courses available and the most appropriate syllabus is required.

Bob

Posted By J Knight
Hi Karel,

Please follow Bob Lewis on this one. Training to a recognised standard really is required, and the security guard was right,

John

Posted By Glyn Atkinson
My wife lectures in a higher education horticulture facility, and all of their working staff have to have attended and successfully completed an NVQ Training Unit on wearing of suitable PPE and the Control of Pesticides within the workplace, including all relevant risk assessments and method statements by individual area for use, storage, safety for students on site, cleaning and safe storage of worn PPE for this task, safe disposal methods for empty containers or packaging etc.

You must prove competence of the user of the pesticide product and also prevent any contamination of water courses or drains with use of the materials.

Robert Lewis is giving excellent info on the thread here.

Posted By Robert K Lewis
Karel

You are spot on - if you do try to match the standard yourself then competent trainer provision. Unless you are heavily active in this area, such as a Local Authority Parks or Highways dept then competent assistance will be hard to find.

Bob

Posted By Robert K Lewis
I think I was having a senior moment in my last posting - Finding a competent trainer is difficult unless you are such as a LA or specialist contractor undertaking a lot of this work:-)

Bob