This is probably fairly specific to construction.

The CLC has published guidance concerning face coverings: http://www.constructionl...n-during-Coronavirus.pdf

This says "The use of face coverings or PPE is not required in response to coronavirus in offices or whilst carrying out construction activities and the Government guidance on Working safely during coronavirus (COVID-19) – Construction and other outdoor workstates that:Workplaces should not encourage the precautionary use of extra PPE to protect against COVID-19 outside clinical settings or when responding to a suspected or confirmed case of COVID-19."

However, the very next paragraph says "Where construction workers are not required to wear PPE for their specific task and their workplace meets all of the criteria below, their employer should make available, as a minimum, face coverings." The criteria are: "an enclosed space, where social distancing isn’t always possible, where they come into contact with others they do not normally meet".

Since offices are indoors, I doubt you can 100% guarantee 2m sapcing, and someone might turn up (delivery drivers, for example - and the HSE has been adamant tyou have to let them in to use facilities), this seems to be pretty much saying constryuction employers must provide face coverings, ubnless your workers are 100% of teh time in teh open air. According to this you should certainly make face coverings available to anyone visiting a different site or office.

Is anyone doing this?

I will ask again - "make available" is that with a charge?

After all it is only true PPE which must be supplied FOC.

Union's need to be careful what they lobby for.

Anything provided for the purposes of H&S is FOC not just PPE, as per HASAWA.

Chris

Is this truly for the purposes of H&S under HASAW?

After all the only regulatory "specification" defining a face covering (made under the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act) is that it is "a covering of any type that covers a person's mouth and nose".

So just what should be made available?

The agitators will keep going until we are all swathed in a minimum of medical masks.

Originally Posted by: Roundtuit

I will ask again - "make available" is that with a charge?

After all it is only true PPE which must be supplied FOC.

Union's need to be careful what they lobby for.

We have chosen to do it free of charge - as a "good employer" but how long that is finacialy viable is questionable. I agree not PPE so we could charge if we wanted - or just tell people to get their own if they wanted them.

The government have been very clear they do not want supplies of medical devices / PPE decimated by widespread use.

Instead we have this theatre production of placebo protection where each individual can choose their own in the event they do not have a "reasonable excuse".

Visor, vented mask, snood, multi-layer... all have issues with the protection offered to others and the wearer which in a critical assessment would dimiss them from being "suitable and sufficient" as a control measure.

On the BBC news this morning 9am, they had someone (sorry didn’t get their name) who has been studying the use and effectiveness of face covers and they showed how the air expelled is altered by the mask, keeping it closer to the head. It also said that the coverings also stop the larger droplets, which they feel are the real problem, not the finer droplets which stay in the air (sometimes for hours).

I tried to see if I could find the interview on the internet but failed, sorry.

Whether they work or not is debatable, however this guy this morning was convincing, showing thermographic film of someone coughing and the air flow. Additionally, it is what is being recommended when in close quarters with others (trains and buses, hair dressers etc). You could not blame a company for then putting it into an assessment as a control.

I agree there are all sorts of issues with their use, spec, how long can they be used for, temp to wash re-usable ones, glasses steaming up to name but a few.

Chris

What was good at the start of this pandemic was the complete absence of  "expert opinion".

What is currently wrong is all the increasingly contradictory "expert opinion" e.g. the debate of droplet size, how far a cough can travel, to sing or not .......

Thermographic images in a laboratory look impressive but do they reflect real life across the whole population?

And now we move to the next level - why can't we, they are.....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-53896372

How's about as a profession we take this public health issue and actually treat it as a workplace risk - face coverings would not pass a reasonable assessement.

Edited by user 24 August 2020 19:09:29(UTC)  | Reason: I want to jump off the cliff because they did.....

I don't understand the teachers' problem, quoted in the BBC article above as: "The guidance is silent on what schools should do if staff or pupils want to wear face coverings"

Well in that case it is up to the schools to decide their own policy on this, just as they do about dress codes and uniforms. That's perfectly clear.  What's the issue?

That report states in one place

"The guidance is silent on what schools should do if staff or pupils want to wear face coverings," says Geoff Barton of the ASCL head teachers' union.

Then a bit further down it states

The government's guidance, issued in early July, says Public Health England does not recommend using face coverings in school.

But then again PHE is being broken up isn’t it.

The thing is the Gov want everyone else to decide what they are going to do, that way they don’t have to take responsibility when it all goes wrong. A report from Scotland said that 17 teachers had caught it (but, O no, not from pupils who show no symptoms) but from one another at a special school in Dundee.

Yes, any expert study in anything will vary to the real world. So, the thermographic film shown will vary as we have all seen people not wearing the coverings properly, some people’s heads are bigger than others so they will fit tighter, and conversely the small headed people more loosely. However, it should be true for the “95 percentile” of the population where if you put anything in front of your mouth it will deflect / alter the air flow and take energy out of it. But no one safety measure is often enough, it is normally a combination of things, depending on which cheese slice you are considering.

Chris

Edited by user 25 August 2020 08:15:56(UTC)  | Reason: unintended link from copy and paste

And there was an interesting article in The Lancet:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30323-4/fulltext

with a host of references to sate your desire for knowledge

I've just had this through

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/government-to-u-turn-on-masks-in-schools/

I suspect an announcement is in the offing...