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With the Legislative Decree n.257, 2007/25/06, it was given effect to the CE Directive nr. 2003/18/CE concerning protection of workers by risks deriving from the exposure to the amiantus during their job, with a particular consideration for the maintenance and removal hyphoteses and for disposal and treatment ones, with the decontamination of the involved areas. It deals with a prescriptive rule which widens the content of the D.Lgs. n. 626/94 and sets new obbligations for the employer. Stated the principle that such performances be exclusively operated by firms following law requirements (art. 30 com.4 Lgs Decree 1997/27), the structure of the decree prescribes fullfillments strictly correlated to various ways of proceeding and organizing works.
The employer will have to make sure of the risk evaluation, starting from locating amiantus presence and taking into consideration both doubt situations regarding its presence and certain ones in the same ways. He will have to hyphotesize nature and degree of exposure to the risk in order to foresee preventive protective and sanitary measures, with particular care of the dust deriving from amiantus and paying attention to workers and external environment in order to avoid losses outside workplaces.
To the prescribed measures the employer will have to make follow some controls by measuring periodically the concentration of amiantus fibers into work place area. The maximum value of 0.1 fibers per cc will have to be verified by samplings to be done consulting workers and with an eight hours reference period by measurements and calculations with weight avarage.
In case of exceeding the limit value the measures to be adopted will have to include the involvement of the workers or their representatives.
There is then the obbligation to arrange – before starting the work action of demolition or removal of amiantus – a work plan to be sent to watch committees and to be placed at workers’ disposal. In such a plan the employer will have to include measures required for assuring workers’ safety and health at the work place and the protection of outside surroundings, which have to be documented by gathering statements and informations concerning the subject of his performance, with regard to: nature and duration of works; place and techniques adopted to remove amiantus; equipment specifications and devices to give effect to the measures for third party and environment protection; for waste gathering and disposal activities.
In case of exceeding the limit value it will be also necessary to prearrange further measures prescribed in the same decree (art.59 undecies). The plan will have also to include informations about protection devices and check on the lack of exposure risks during the whole work period. But the plan is a different thing from the notice to be sent to the watch committe which have territorial jurisdiction. This one deals with a document including the description of the yard location and the work foreseen time as well as the amiantus types and amaunts; the activities and applied procedures; the number of workers involved; and the adopted measures to limit workers exposure. As regards this fullfillment, changes of work conditions such as causing a significant exposure increase will bring on the obbligation of a new notice.
For what concerns the rest of the obbligation prescribed for the employer a particular attention deserves the new art. 95 septies, where in such a formulation seems to be implied the basic content to consider – almost in terms of presumption of law – and to identify appropriate measures in order to reduce to minimum and in any case below the limit value the exposure risks. It deals with a series of measures ranging from workers to materials and manifacturing processes and more from work places and equipments cleanliness to polluted material disposal. Disposal that we have to discriminate between storage and carriage – to be executed with “proper closed package” – and waste gathering and removal – package on which to be “affixed labels that specify they contain amiantus”.
At last, the decree deals with sanitary safeguarding of workers who are going to be exposed to amiantus before they are assigned at such tasks, periodically one time every three years and at the end of their job where they have been exposed to amiantus. On this matter, however, a decisive role is obviously called to play by an experienced medical doctor, so any more account on this subject quite concerning to such a professional figure, is to be referred to another seat.
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