The Health and Safety Commission (HSC) has published a Consultation Document inviting comments on proposals to introduce new and revised Workplace Exposure Limits (WELs). WELs are concentrations of hazardous substances in the air, approved by the HSC. Employers have a responsibility to ensure that these limits are not exceeded in order to protect the health of workers.

The HSC’s proposals are significant in the implementation of the 2nd Directive on Indicative Occupational Exposure Limit Values (IOELVs) (2006/15/EC), adopted in February by the European Commission. The directive lists 33 substances with exposure limits, for which Member States must introduce a domestic occupational exposure limit by September 2007. For many of the 33 substances, a comparable Workplace Exposure Limit already exists in Great Britain and has been published by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

The Consultation document proposes to introduce WELs for 7 substances where one does not currently exist and reduce the limit of the WELs for13 substances. It is proposed that the new and revised WELs will be introduced on 6 April 2007.

Further details of the proposed changes can be found in the Consultative Document, available from the HSE website at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/consult/condocs/cd208.pdf The consultation period will last for 12 weeks.

Source: www.hse.gov.uk (accessed 01/09/06)

This entry was posted on Monday, September 18th, 2006 at 2:58 pm and is filed under Health & Safety News, in Touch Legislation Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.