Occupational Health and Safety

The reality is these shiny stone benchtops are not a necessity and too many of our tradies who work with them are getting sick or dying, writes Adele Ferguson.

A court has heard the man became violent after arriving at the emergency department of a South Australian hospital after running out of his anti-psychotic medication.

The record fine was handed down in the NSW District Court after a worker was pulled into a woodchipper that had known defects in 2019. 

A private college in Adelaide's north is fined $420,000 for breaching the Work Health and Safety Act after a teenage student drowned during a 2021 school camping trip.

NSW Work Health and Safety Minister Sophie Cotsis says there is "absolutely no excuse" for noncompliance as stop work orders are issued at two construction sites in the city.

More than three years after Whakaari White Island erupted and killed 22 people, New Zealand's workplace health and safety regulator will bring the owners of the volcano and several tours companies to court. 

Since the dust settled on the pandemic, personal choice has replaced government mandates. So which of our COVID-19 habits did we keep, and which have we let slide? 

Wildlife rescue volunteers operating on a busy road say they feel increasingly anxious not just for the koalas they are trying to rescue but for their own safety.

A Queensland nurse has successfully sued the Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service following a workplace injury in 2016.

Firefighters in this small regional town have been forced to shower outdoors in freezing conditions, often leaving them unable to decontaminate after exposure to harmful toxins.

With 54 "really concerning" mining incidents across Queensland since January, the union worries workers' lives are being put at risk.

A man has suffered serious injuries at the Cadia gold mine near Orange in the New South Wales central west, forcing the temporary suspension of operations.

Sharon Westerman lost her son in a mine incident seven years ago. Each time a person dies on a Western Australian work site she is transported back to that horrific day.

A McDonald's manager who was punched and spat on by a customer tells the Adelaide Magistrates Court he still has flashbacks of the incident and has to attend therapy sessions.

For years, Aardvark Adventures has sent abseilers over the edge of a spectacularly high dam in Tasmania's south-west. But the business has been asked to undergo safety testing before it can renew its licence, and its owner-operator wants the state government to help pay for it.

Evidence will be sought from experts in trench rescues to determine what impact the emergency response had on the deaths of 21-year-old Jack Brownlee and 34-year-old Charlie Howkins.

Kieren McDowall was killed in an incident at Mineral Resources' Ken's Bore mine site, his employer has confirmed. The death is the fourth fatality in Western Australia's mining industry since October 2022, raising questions about the industry's safety measures.

Highview College made headlines for excluding two African students from class due to their hairstyles. Now, an independent investigator is examining whether the school is in breach of any workplace policies.

Before and after photos show the transformation of a home where two Port Lincoln siblings lived in squalor just 18 months ago. But their case worker fears more hoarders will slip through the cracks.

A council has argued a legal technicality to have charges dropped, following the 2018 deaths of a father and son at Airlie Beach Lagoon in the Whitsundays.

Finke Desert Race organisers have been issued a permit for the car section of this year's event, after a spectator died in 2021.

WorkSafe is set to prosecute the owners of a Kalgoorlie-based assay laboratory where four workers allegedly received lead poisoning, including one who was hospitalised for high levels of lead in their blood.  

After months of legal argument, appeals, and hearings, the president of the Industrial Court of Queensland ruled this month that matters can proceed against Carborough Downs Coal Management over the death of Brad Duxbury in 2019.

A central Queensland mine operator has been cleared of breaching workplace health and safety laws over the death of a miner, despite a court ruling there was an "obvious" risk with faulty machinery.

Anxiety is growing among locals as a clean-up of Pemberton's fire-damaged timber mill stalls about five months after the asbestos-clad building went up in flames.