KANBrief 3/09
Occupational safety and health has a new advocate in the arena of European standardization. With SABOHS, CEN has created a “strategic advisory body for occupational health and safety“ which will advise the CEN Rapporteur Occupational Health and Safety and the Technical Committees on OSH issues.
In mid-2008, the CEN Technical Board (CEN/BT) decided to replace the temporarily constituted Working Group Occupational Health & Safety (CEN/BT WG 168) with a permanent strategic advisory body. This move reflects the fact that occupational safety and health is a horizontal function which affects numerous Technical Committees and which can be implemented effectively only by continual work. Strategic advisory bodies already exist for the areas of the environment (SABE) and of innovation and research (STAIR). In order to facilitate the exchange of information with the various disciplines, the advisory bodies provide information on the latest developments on the CEN website. They may offer events such as workshops or seminars on special subjects in conjunction with the CEN Management Center.
The new CEN SABOHS body is composed of representatives from OSH and standards institutes in Europe, CEN Rapporteurs, representatives of the social partners, and other experts. The chairman is Norbert Breutmann (Chairman of KAN, Confederation of German Employers‘ Associations). Mick Maghar from the British Standards Institute (BSI) was appointed as secretary. The German mirror committee is a working group of the DIN Commission on Safety Engineering (KS).
SABOHS has the task of supporting CEN in strategic OSH issues, promoting the exchange of information on OSH topics, and providing assistance in the development of standards of relevance to OSH. In practice, this results in tasks including the following:
CEN SABOHS held its first meeting on 7 May 2009. The members have agreed to regard the Cracow Memorandum of the EUROSHNET occupational safety and health network as the point of reference for their work. The Memorandum formulates six principles concerning the requirements placed upon standards pursuant to New Approach directives, and contains numerous specific proposals for this purpose.
One point of the Memorandum which SABOHS has identified as being particularly important is the issue of “incomplete standards“. These are harmonized European standards which fail to implement all the essential health and safety requirements of the EU directives which they support. They present a risk of distorting competition, since owing to differences in risk assessment, manufacturers apply different safety levels when designing products. Interpretations may also differ among the market surveillance authorities in the EU Member States of how the provisions of the directives are to be implemented in practice.
In addition, SABOHS has discussed the extent to which CEN Workshop Agreements (CWAs) should contain safety provisions. CWAs are standardization documents which have been developed by only a limited group of participants. A number of members of SABOHS were of the view that “normal“, consensus-based standards are indispensable for safety aspects.
Further topics with which SABOHS is currently concerned are the standardization projects which have been launched, particularly at international level in the area of nanotechnology, and improved integration of ergonomic aspects in machine safety standards. The next meeting of CEN SABOHS will be held in Brussels on 19 November 2009.
Werner Sterk
sterk@kan.de