Silica, asbestos, psychosocial risk and the exposure standards
that govern them, reported as the duties the current codes actually impose and cited
to the primary document.
In National Farm Safety Week, WorkSafe Victoria counts 39 agriculture deaths since 2021
and eight fatal tractor incidents since the start of 2025. The rollover bar and seatbelt that
would prevent most of it are already required on wheeled tractors, with narrow exemptions that
point straight at the oldest machines.
Australia's exposure standards become workplace exposure limits on 1 December
2026, most of them newly health-based. Nine chemicals keep their old numbers,
and the impact statement ministers were answering says those numbers are not
health-based. The table of what stays and what was declined.
Vehicle incidents killed 79 workers in 2024, 42 per cent of the total, yet
produced under 5 per cent of serious claims. Section 8 defines a workplace to
include a vehicle; the fatigue code's 17-hours-awake line, the HVNL chain of
responsibility, and the delivery riders the duty now reaches.
A cleaner alone in a city office at night is isolated in law. Regulation 48's
risk duty and effective-communication requirement, the code's assessment factors
and buddy-system controls, the psychosocial half of the hazard, and why the home
office is already inside the duty.
Contact dermatitis mostly takes hands and takes months to heal. The dermal
route in the chemicals code, the Sk notation, wet work's two-hour rule, the
hierarchy that puts substitution before gloves, and the Schedule 14 chemicals
where weekly skin inspection is regulation.
The open-site companion to the warehouse page: construction, civil, earthmoving
and resources yards. The plant collision duty, the separation-first hierarchy, the
reversing controls the mining incident summaries keep pointing at, and the traffic
management plan a competent person has to write down.
The warehouse traffic guide's first answer to forklifts is separation:
overhead walkways, barriers, separate pedestrian doors, exclusion zones. The
loading-dock choreography, the drive-off hardware, the traffic management plan,
and the LF licence a PCBU must sight in writing before anyone drives.
Falls, trips and slips produced 32,000 serious claims in 2023-24 and 68.3 per
cent of them were on the same level. Regulation 40's floor and lighting duties,
the work environment code's inspection rule, the stair geometry in the slips
fact sheet, and why a wet-floor sign is the second-weakest control.
Plant covers the forklift and the power tool alike, and regulation 208
fixes the order of guards: permanently fixed, then interlocked, then
tool-removable, then presence-sensing. The isolation rules, the powered
mobile plant duties, and the plant that must be registered before use.
Regulation 36 makes the hierarchy of controls law, with personal
protective equipment the level of last resort. The provide, select,
maintain, train and ensure-use duties in regulations 44 to 47, the fit and
compatibility rules, and why the worker never pays for any of it.
Regulation 78 covers any fall from one level to another that is reasonably
likely to cause injury, and fixes the control order: ground first, then fall
prevention, then work positioning, then fall arrest. The ladder rules, the
rescue duty a harness creates, and the 24 deaths in the 2024 data.
The exposure standard is regulation, not guidance: LAeq,8h 85 dB(A) and a
140 dB(C) peak. The dose table from the November 2024 code, the buy-quiet
duties on designers, the audiometric testing rule, and why the most common
permanent injury shows up as 200 claims a year.
No heat code exists and no thermometer reading ends a shift by law. The
duty assembles from section 19, regulation 40, the work environment code and
the heat guide, and it covers heatwaves, indoor heat, the monitoring
requirement and the right to cease unsafe work.
The manual tasks code lists prolonged sitting at a workstation as a hazard
in its own right, and regulation 60 makes managing it a duty. The workstation
and seating rules, the 30-minute and 7-hour sedentary thresholds, and the
claims table that says office injuries are rare but run long.
The hazardous chemicals code arranges storage duties as a quantity ladder:
GHS labels, SDS and a register at any amount, placards at the Schedule 11
threshold, and a manifest plus an emergency plan lodged with the fire brigade
above the manifest quantity. The thresholds, litre by litre.
The electrical risks code prohibits energised work outside four narrow
exceptions and requires testing for dead every time; the plant code sets the
eight-step lock-out process for every other energy source. What each demands,
and the records that prove it.
The National Construction Code builds the exits; getting people to them is
the employer's emergency plan under regulation 43. Who coordinates the plan in
a shared building, the 12-month drill benchmark, and the two current NCC
editions a national operator now straddles.
The September 2025 model fatigue code names the roster patterns that create
risk: more than three successive nights, less than 12 hours between shifts,
less than 24 hours' notice. What it expects a shift-running PCBU to show, and
what a roster agreement cannot sign away.
Safe Work Australia's own review says the ban is working, and six things
around it are not finished. What a duty holder still has to do about silica,
benchtops and the products sold as safe.
The 14 named psychosocial hazards, the officer due diligence checklist, and
the claims data that says bullying and harassment, not work pressure, is the
biggest driver.
Safe Work Australia's March 2026 model code applies to any workplace where a
worker could be exposed, and treats the cold and the flu carried in from the
community as hazards to manage. What counts, who is most exposed, and the controls
it asks for.