The importance of Health & Safety - a genuine case study

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kafkaian

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14 Feb 2005
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Dear contributors,

I think I need to share this with you all.

Early in February my father was admitted to our local hospital in Solihull, West Midlands, with respiratory problems having been diagnosed some months previously with COPD - Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease i.e. disease of the lungs. He was having difficulty breathing.

This disease can be of two distinct causes; occupational (dust/chemical inhalation) and social (smoking).

In my father's case this was probably a combination of the two. However, in his early years before he became a white collar administrator and engineer, and during his time in the RAF, he worked with chemicals, dust creating equipment and spraying guns succumbing to all sorts of airborne 'nasties'. Not only that, my father's relaxation came from successfully refitting, revamping and working on the various family homes we had over time.

Sanding would be done WITHOUT a mask. Cars would be resprayed WITHOUT a mask. Old lead paints would be removed WITHOUT adequate protection. In those days, 50s, 60s, 70s and even 80s, these careless practices were the norm and it was perfectly reasonable to clean hands using paraffin, turps or spirits (not good for the liver) or suck petrol out of tanks with a tube.

In my father's case, these lack of simple precautions based on the genuine ignorance of the time with regard to breathing have culminated in the following:

In mid-February my 76 year old father contracted an infection of the lung i.e. pneumonia. After being put on a pressurised NIV mask in an attempt to improve oxygen uptake and ease the breathing, the respiratory consultant in charge, on realising my father was near death, took the inevitable decision to apply an invasive procedure to allow apparatus to take over my father's lungs. He was then rushed to an ITU/ICU ward at another hospital where he remained unconscious for several days while sedation and third party life support was applied.

On the 23rd/24th February my father's condition was critical and we nearly lost him as the doctors gave him only a 50/50 chance of survival.

A few days ago after a slow and arduous recovery in a hospital ward where he was allowed to fall twice and took at least 2 weeks to speak lucidly, my father was eventually released from hospital. He survived this ordeal but still remains in a poorly state of breathlessness, swollen ankles and malnutrition - all exacerbated by the diarrhoea from the many drugs and antibiotics still required.

To make matters worse and further reducing his quality of life, over the last 10 to 15 years during his retirement, my father developed tinnitus and virtually lost most of his natural hearing. This was all due to the following in order of the severity of cause and effect:

1) Not using ear defenders during factory visits churning out noise that would be considered obscene by today's standard,
2) Not using ear defenders when working with power tools.

The crux of this post is this:

Dear fellow contributor, woodworker and DIYer/builder, please, please, please wear a mask when doing your work if you don't have specialist extraction systems and make sure they fit and are of sufficient grading for the job.

I am 42 and during my 20s and 30s was also very complacent. Now I have put a stop to that and won't create dust unless my family is out of the way and I have suitable protection. I have probably created in myself, a similar legacy to my father's but at least have 20 odd more years to protect my lungs in the way he didn't and might, therefore, suffer less of an ordeal - added to which I have never smoked.

If anything I hope my father's genuine case will convince contributors/readers to this and other forums, that they must wear suitable protection at all times commensurate to the task in hand. If you don't want to do this for yourselves, then please do this for your family and loved ones who will have to endure the trauma me and my family have had to for some weeks now. One minute my father was about to die, the next he had a future and this situation continued like a switch of hope and despair. The emotional rollercoaster was the most debilitating situation I have ever experienced and would not wish this on anyone here.

The jury's still out on mdf, modern plastics and insulation material, but I suspect in years to come the effects of these modern materials along with their binding agents and glues will become subject to objective scutiny leading to all sorts of detrimental health questions.

The saddest thing of all during my father's stay in Intensive Care was stark. Most of the people admitted to ICU had breathing problems of some sort, but in a ward of 9 incumbents at any one time, many died. It was like a conveyor belt of death.

Work safe and live long

All the best

Ian
 
Ian, i am very sorry to hear about your dad, and i hope that he gets much better soon.

A post like this really makes you sit up and take notice.

Regards

Woody
 
Well said, Ian.
That kind of post is good for us all.
I do hope your father gets better and becomes more able to live his life as he, and you, would wish.
Best wishes.

SF
 
Very sobering reading. For what it's worth, I always wear a good quality respirator when working in any dusty environment - I suffer from allergic rhinitis, which gives me a splitting headache the next day if I get even a tiny amount of dust up my nose ! I suspect that as time goes by, we will find out that all sorts of pollutants have long-term health consequences.

Colin
 
So sorry to hear about your father, I hope he recovers to his normal self.
A lot of what you wrote (other than the trauma of the hostpital) could have been written about me. I have just recieved a settlement for dust problems after working all my life in the mining industry, and yet I still do things without proper protection.
What really got me was this
If you don't want to do this for yourselves, then please do this for your family and loved ones who will have to endure the trauma me and my family have had to for some weeks now.
I thought about my Grandkids and my family and I promise you I will take a copy of your letter and put it in my workshop and from now on will always wear the protection required.

Thank you Alan.
 
Recently I've been using a lot of mdf and thinking,must change these filters on my mask.Thank you Ian,you've woken me up.

Good Luck

Dom
 
Sorry to hear about your Father Ian. Did I read right about him falling while in hospital?? If so do you realise the hospital is liable in cases like that (at least I think they are).

If you have been browsing these forums you may have come across my "Dust: A Cautionary Tale" thread where recently I also didn't use a dust mask and was cutting mdf which lead to a severe sinus infection. No way am I ever going to do anything that leads to dust without using a dust mask. I've even got an air ioniser/filter for use when doing decorating. It may sound yucky but I never realised the amount of junk that could come out of just one sinus cavity (I was lucky in one respect that only the sinus cavity under my left eye was affected). Just look at what a bit of dust can do...
sinusitis_big.jpg


Anyway, I hope your father gets better soon.
 
perceptive comments. my father worked with stone for many years, and masons rarely used masks, but everybody only thought that black lung was only something gotten by coal miners..

mdf is dangerous when in dust form, that we know, but there are too many scare stories about the chemicals in it. from personal experience i know many old undertakers and coroners who swig more of the neat chemical product in mdf on a daily basis than most kitchen fitters do in their lifetimes. however it is sensible to take advantage of any devices which stop things going into our lungs.

as a youngster (yes i do remember when!!!! :lol: :lol: )
we used to blow the dust out of brake drums by mouth, wot asbestos????
and that takes 20-30 years to show up. we also used to use nitro methane as a fuel, and sip it up to transfer into fuel tanks.

for me the major problem with much health and safety is it relies upon making it almost impossible to do the job, so you ignore them, and then the accidents are caused.

as some one who has recently lost both parents whilst they were in hospital, my father as a long term result of catching CDiff in the hospital, i am also aware that too many people in the medical profession do not remember to use all the health and safety equipment they have available to them, hence the spread of MRSA and C Diff.

still the problem with most of it is we think "this job will only take a couple of minutes, and so it is not worth the effort, your comments might make us all think it is worth the effort to find the dust mask and ear defenders"

hope your dad is getting back to a decent quality of life
paul :wink:
 
I forgot to mention that I lost my mom last year from emphesymia. She smoked a lot when she was young but when the doctor told her to either stop smoking or die she did... That was twenty or so years ago yet on the death certificate it said the cause of death was... smoking.

If anyone had seen what mom had had to go through it would have put anyone off smoking. It totally destroyed her quality of life for the last 20-30 years. In fact the doc said she hadn't got long to live back in the 80's but she was stubborn and fought to hold on. Unfortunately my dad died two years ago in April and mom lived for him. It was only 9 months after dad died that mom died too. She just pined for him.

Anyway, my advice to anyone who smokes is try your hardest to give up. It won't affect you now but it in the future. It's basically a ticking bomb... you just don't know when it's going to go off.

The same goes for dust and other things. Just because it's a quick job and it doesn't seem worth putting a dust mask on it doesn't mean it won't harm you. You are basically playing Russian Roulette!
 
[quote="Neomorph"]Sorry to hear about your Father Ian. Did I read right about him falling while in hospital?? If so do you realise the hospital is liable in cases like that (at least I think they are).

If you have been browsing these forums you may have come across my "Dust: A Cautionary Tale" thread where recently I also didn't use a dust mask and was cutting mdf which lead to a severe sinus infection. No way am I ever going to do anything that leads to dust without using a dust mask. I've even got an air ioniser/filter for use when doing decorating. It may sound yucky but I never realised the amount of junk that could come out of just one sinus cavity (I was lucky in one respect that only the sinus cavity under my left eye was affected). Just look at what a bit of dust can do...
sinusitis_big.jpg


Anyway, I hope your father gets better soon.[/quote]

hi John

Athough i respect your advice, litigacious advice that I have highlighted serves no benefit to the public IMHO. I am a student mental health nurse and over the last couple of years I have bore witness to several older people falling. From my experience, older people do fall over due to their lack of mobility. In an ideal world this would not happen, but unfortunately the world is not ideal and older people cannot be supervised all of the time. Nobody wants this sort of accident to happen, especially the people who care for them, but unfortunately it does. You have every right to make the statment you made, in the best interest of the member you are advising, but I equate older people falling over to a toddler falling over, it happens. To the world it looks far more serious than what it is and, as most people know older people bruise far more easier. I hope I don't sound patronising and I apologise if i do, but it appears to me that people are not as tolerant as they once were, as such we are expected to live in an ideal world where accidents should not happen. IMHO

Phil
 
Not a problem Phil. I was just wondering if it could make your father's life a little easier as the hospitals are insured for this very purpose. A few years ago my mother smashed her shoulder after tripping over some cracked paving and the council were tripping over themselves to help (pun unintended lol).

It just seemed stange to me that in a ward where they were fighting for your fathers life that they dropped the ball and let him have not just one fall but two.
 
Hi John,

It isn't my father I was talking about, I think we've got our wires crossed. As to hospitals being insured, they probably are, but compensation also comes out of the Primary Care Trust's budget. I must reiterate that I sympathise with anyone who is unfortunate to be on the recieving end of an accident, especially the person who had a perfectly good kidney removed last week. Maybe I am not as critical, as I have been fortunate not to have experienced any accidents, may be my point of view would be different if this were the case.

Phil

PS apologies to Ian for hijacking his post :oops:
 
Thanks for all your kind words everybody.

Just wear that mask or put those ear defenders in when required.

And lastly, to those who have experienced similar problems with their loved ones or even personally or otherwise, then you have my sincerest and deepest best wishes or condolences.
 
kafkaian":18kobg9e said:
Dad died 8:30 pm this evening due to an NHS blunder.

Wear those masks

Mate I'm seriously sorry for your loss. I'm just coming up to the two year anniversary of my own dad's death so I know what you are going through.

Take care mate. :cry:
 

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