A big stink over contamination

High profile companies face embarrassing clean-up operations – and ridiculous amounts of hysteria

Whither the management of workplaces, and of facilities generally?

Yes, record merger and acquisition activity and a booming globalisation of R&D will affect all kinds of facilities in 2007. Yes, so will new legislation on security, energy, fire, asbestos and ageism: the Workplace Law Handbook 2007 now runs, I see, to 700 pages. And yes, I too have decided to get very excited about Defra, and can’t wait to read about its ‘revised waste strategy’ due ‘in the first part of 2007’.

But in truth the important trend is more insidious: the growth of mania about contamination.

In India and Pakistan in 2006, both Pepsi and Coke were charged with selling tainted goods – although nationalist rhetoric against US domination probably trumped genuine contamination here. But it was a similar story in the US itself, where the Food and Drug Administration investigated an outbreak of E. coli O157 infection in several Taco Bell restaurants in northeastern states (green onions were to blame, apparently). Finally in Britain, Cadbury had to make nationwide arrangements for its products to be pulled out of vending machines on customer premises, once it had detected very modest quantities of salmonella in some of its chocolate.

All of these cases, in which nobody died, were about the contamination of The Most Important Thing In All Our Lives Nowadays – food and drink. But now think about the Litvinenko affair, involving that most ubiquitous of radioactive contaminants: polonium.

From London to Hamburg, officialdom told people who had bumped into some sushi or a shifty-looking Russian not to panic. Don’t panic! Just phone NHS Direct if you’re worried, but we really think you shouldn’t panic! Like Clive Dunn as Jones in Dad’s Army, New Labour insists on exaggerating every threat to life and limb, even when it tries to act grown-up.

We can expect a lot more of that in 2007.

Taking contamination in its widest sense, the humbling of BP in the US last year, in particular over the 15 deaths that occurred after the 23 March 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery, was also of vital importance.

James A Baker III’s Report of the B.P. U.S. Refineries Independent Safety Review Panel (January 2007) distinguishes between hazards to personal safety at work, involving individuals, and hazards to ‘process safety’ – major accidents involving the release of potentially dangerous materials, the release of energy (fires, explosions), or both. Process safety incidents, it reminds us, can result in ‘multiple injuries and fatalities, as well as substantial economic, property, and environmental damage’. And contamination? While Baker did talk about the need to prevent equipment malfunctions, over-pressures, excessive temperatures and metal fatigue, he also singled out the need to prevent leaks, spills and corrosion. (p x)

That’s a message that, as Baker avers, goes beyond BP. (p i) Along with food, drink and iffy substances, all forms of plumbing promise to be a key source of contamination mania from now on.

I say mania, because Russian nuclear intrigues in London restaurants are no more typical of workplace health and safety today than are Texan refinery explosions. And as Baker points out, the Texas tragedy itself was one of the most serious U.S. workplace disasters in all of two decades. (p i)

Safety against contaminations is an important issue. But like the man said, don’t panic.