Safety and health

Overview

ERA’s Health and Safety program is paramount and covers the broadest scope of activities. ERA first achieved certification to AS/NZS 4801 in September 2005.

Safety and Occupational health

ERA is committed to its objective of becoming the safest Australian workplace. To do this the company embraces values based principles to systematically improve its approach to safety and health and continually progress towards an injury free workplace. Thus, ERA provides a safe and healthy working environment and at the same time empowering employees, contractors, and visitors, the ability to make safe decisions.

As part of the group, ERA utilises Rio Tinto safety standards, and Dupont Safety guidelines as the basis to provide management leadership and employee involvement, and therefore manage and control workplace hazards to advance safety and occupational health performance.

Radiation

At ERA’s operations, engineering controls, coupled with comprehensive work procedures, ensure radiation doses are kept as low as practicable. Workers in the Mill production work category, who receive the highest dose of non-office employees at Ranger, average annual dose is around three milliSieverts (mSv) per annum.

This compares to the occupational dose limit of 100 millisieverts in a five year period, which is an average of 20 millisieverts in each year, with a proviso that no person should receive more than 50 millisieverts in any one year.

But what is a milliSievert?

Just as length is measured in units of metres, radiation dose is measured in units of sieverts. Since one sievert (Sv) represents a large dose, it is more common to show doses in millisieverts (mSv) or even microsieverts (uSv). One millisievert is one thousandth of one sievert and one micro sievert is one thousandth on one millisievert. Therefore:

• High level radiation doses are doses of more than 1000 millisieverts;
• Medium level radiation doses are of the order of hundreds of millisieverts; and
• Low level radiation doses are down in the tens of millisieverts

The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation reports (2000 Report to the UN General Assembly) that: “the worldwide annual exposures to natural radiation sources would generally be expected to be in the range 1-10mSv, with 2.4mSv being the present estimate of the central value.”

Emergency Services

ERA has comprehensive security and emergency procedures, a fully trained response group, and facilities to effectively keep operational areas secure and manage any emergencies or incidents.