Chemical seminars to help Queensland pool shops avoid hefty fines

Workplace Health and Safety Queensland is currently conducting investigations targeting pool shop and service businesses that don’t have a chemicals register on site or don’t have all the safety data sheets (SDSs) for chemicals used or sold in the workplace.

SPASA Australia COO Spiros Dassakis says that investigations include questioning staff and managers on whether they know where the chemicals register and SDSs are located, and if a manager or staff member doesn’t know the answer, they will receive a priority infringement fine.

The fines are $3600 for each infringement for a Pty Ltd registered business.

“In the past, WHS inspectors would issue an improvement notice which directed the business to develop a chemicals register and obtain current SDSs,” says Dassakis.

“Fines were at the discretion of the inspector, but inspectors no longer have this discretion for the priority infringements – even if the register is drafted during the inspector’s visit.

“As a consequence of this, SPASA has coordinated a series of three presentations to be delivered by Workplace Health and Safety Queensland,” he says. “This is to ensure industry understands their obligations under workplace health and safety and is part of our ongoing commitment to educating the industry,” he says.

“It’s all very positive. We explained that just fining people isn’t sufficient, they need to work with us to help make sure everyone has the most up-to-date information, and in order to reach our combined objectives we should work together.”

Seminar dates

The seminars will be held on:

Tuesday May 14 (Brisbane)

Wednesday May 15 (Gold Coast)

Thursday May 16 (Sunshine Coast)

Contact Luke Daly at luke@spasa.com.au to register your interest.

The next step after these initial meetings will be to develop half day workplace health and safety workshops.