Everyone wants to finish a day’s work and come home to their loved ones. Peter Lamont looks at the health and safety concerns of cablers and how they can stay safe.

Safety should always be a workplace priority given the potentially hazardous nature of the work carried out by our data and telecommunications workers engaged in construction, maintenance or installation work on properties.

Data and telecommunications workers often need to drill holes in walls and benches, crawl through ceiling spaces, dig trenches or try and manoeuvre cables in wall cavities. This can result in dangers for workers through exposure to live electricity, loose fill or bonded asbestos, hazards such as slips, trips and falls, being hit by falling objects, major cuts from sharp objects, crystalline silica exposure, gas piping and the risks associated with non-compliant products.

The Electrical Regulatory Authorities Council (ERAC) recently released a report titled Electrical Fatal Incident Data Australia and New Zealand 2022-23. The report notes that in the past 23 years, there were 366 electrical fatalities in Australia. This is an annual average of 16 fatalities in Australia and the number for individuals hits a low of five in 2017-18 and a high of 37 in 2000-01.

While it’s encouraging to see the number of deaths in 2022-23 down to eight, what strikes the most concern is that only one of these deaths was an electrical worker. Four of the deaths were non-electrical workers and three members of the general public.

The main contributing factors to these fatalities are deterioration of equipment or wiring, misuse or interference with equipment or wiring, installation failures or poor work practices.

Additionally, Safe Work Australia (SWA) releases periodic fatality statistics across all occupations in its report titled Work-related Traumatic Injury Fatalities, Australia. In the most recent report, SWA notes that between 2017 and 2021 across Australia, there were six fatalities of electronics and telecommunications trade workers.

These reports highlight the fact that our data and telecommunications industry workers are operating in at-risk work environments. While coming into contact with live electricity is probably the greatest risk, it’s far from the only risk.

Electrical risks are indeed somewhat lower when a safety switch has been installed on the premises you might be working on. But don’t be fooled into thinking that safety switches are in place and that you can’t receive a fatal electric shock.

NECA has made it clear, on many occasions, that while safety switches significantly reduce the risk of electric shock, they don’t protect in all circumstances. For example, a safety switch will not disconnect the supply if a person contacts both the active and neutral conductors while handling faulty electrical equipment and the electricity flows through the person’s body unless there is also a current flow to earth.

While AS/NZS 3000 Wiring Rules (for electricians) required that safety switches be installed in new buildings back in 2000, it wasn’t until 2018 that it became mandatory to install safety switches on all final sub-circuits in new domestic and residential installations (this includes anywhere that people live, including hotels).

While this is a tremendously positive step, there are no national requirements to retrofit safety switches into domestic and residential installations that were built before 1 January 2019. This does leave a legacy of domestic and residential premises with many having either no or limited safety switches for many decades to come.

Then, when it comes to commercial premises and other workplaces, the legal requirements for safety switches vary considerably. Construction sites are governed by strict laws, including the use of portable safety switches. However, when you look at other workplace premises, such as office blocks, warehouses, factory production lines, shopping centres and so on, the electrical safety obligations are that a person conducting a business or undertaking must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that any electrical risk associated with the supply of electricity to “plug in” electrical equipment is minimised by the use of an appropriate safety switch in higher-risk workplaces. This normally means that plug-in electrical equipment is used in conditions that involve exposure to moisture, heat, vibration, mechanical damage, corrosive chemicals or dust.

This results in significant ongoing electrical risks as there are many building locations where telecommunications workers are likely to install cabling and where there are no mandatory requirements around the use of safety switches.

The introduction of AS/CA 2009 Installation Requirements for Customer Cabling (Wiring Rules for cablers) has also opened a debate over who should be allowed to install ES3 cables. The electrical safety laws across the country stipulate that the installation of any cabling, including communications cabling, that operates above extra low voltage (ELV), which is deemed to be above 50V AC and above 120V DC (ripple free) is considered to be electrical work and requires an electrical work license.

We all know that ES3 cables can sustain voltage levels significantly greater than ELV at up to 1,000V. Even when ACMA last undertook a comprehensive audit of data and telecommunications cabling work back in 2017, they found that 35% of the 178 sites they visited had non-compliant cabling. Of this 63% related to Wiring Rule breaches (AS/CA S009), with the main breach being inadequate separation from the low voltage electrical cables.

The majority of the non-compliance found by ACMA was found to be in low-rise building sites. Over the years, there has been a litany of unnecessary fatalities where electrical currents have arced from one electrical source to another (such as copper wiring) through a process of induction, where the wires have been placed too close together. This can easily include induction into communications cabling.

It is worth noting that on 12 December 2012, a young Dale Kennedy died from electrocution while installing data cables for a PA system in the ceiling space of Bentley Park College in Edmonton in Far North Queensland. This tragic incident illustrates the dangers surrounding work anywhere near electrical cables. In this case, he inadvertently pierced an electrical cable livening metallic parts of an air-conditioning system that he then came into contact with. Electricity, by its very nature, is extremely hazardous and often doesn’t give an individual a second chance.

But, it’s not just electricity that is a danger to data and telecommunications workers. For many decades now we have also seen the dangers associated with asbestos, particularly mesothelioma. The Cancer Council has released data that shows that in 2020, 701 people died from mesothelioma and that the estimated number of newly diagnosed cases was 904 in 2022. Mesothelioma can be caused by a single fibre sticking to your lungs. While mesothelioma has a long-term latency, the prognosis is generally terminal. While the use of asbestos has been completely banned in Australia since 2003 and in building materials since 1990, there is still a significant legacy of asbestos in many homes across Australia today. This heightens the dangers of drilling holes in wall cavities, particularly in older homes.

We now also have considerable risks with drilling holes into silica-based materials, such as engineered stone bench tops, which can release crystalline silica dust, which can cause serious illnesses such as silicosis and lung cancer. The Cancer Council has estimated that around 230 people each year develop lung cancer or silicosis as a result of exposure to silica dust.

Dangers are also present with falls from heights, being hit by falling objects or being hit by moving objects. SWA data shows that in 2022 across the construction sector, there were 17 deaths from falls from heights, 26 deaths from being hit by moving objects and 17 deaths from being hit by falling objects.

All of this illustrates the range of dangers that data and telecommunications workers face daily. Work Health and Safety laws require that before all workplace jobs you need to conduct a risk assessment to identify the dangers or hazards you will encounter and how you will mitigate or eliminate those risks.

Finally, the Telecommunications Cabling Provider Rules 2014 (Part 4 section 4.1(2)) requires that all data and telecommunications work job supervisors must:

• Be registered for the type of work you are doing (open, restricted or lift)
• Take full responsibility for the standard of work you complete
• Ensure all work complies with the rules and requirements for cablers
• Complete the cabling advice forms at the end of the job

Do yourself and your family a favour and work safely so that you can return home at the end of each day.