Article: Station staff air grievances over fumes

[ozbob]

From the Melbourne Age click here!

Station staff air grievances over fumes

Station staff air grievances over fumes
Clay Lucas
October 26, 2010

DIESEL fumes circulating beneath Southern Cross railway station's roof have caused 133 complaints from staff in the past three years, opposition transport spokesman Terry Mulder says.

Mr Mulder has obtained incident reports and a station illness logbook dating back to 2007.

These show a stream of complaints about diesel fumes from about 30 staff at the railway station working for V/Line or Metro, or its predecessor Connex.

The complaints range from feeling dizzy or nauseous to headaches and throat and eye irritations.

AssetCo, the company that operates the station for the state government, says constant monitoring has shown there is nothing wrong with air quality at the station.

But staff complaints about air quality have been occurring at the station since it opened in 2006.

Mr Mulder said the government had failed to act on the ''serious health concerns'' caused by diesel fumes and should have installed extractor fans long ago to minimise the problem.

The Rail, Tram and Bus Union's state secretary, Trevor Dobbyn, said the union had raised the issue several times with AssetCo and testing and continuing monitoring had been put in place.

He said this showed air quality was within normal ranges. ''However, our members are still experiencing problems with diesel fumes in the station on a regular basis,'' Mr Dobbyn said.

He said station staff would hold a meeting today where the union would also call for extractor fans to be installed ''to eliminate this once and for all''.

But AssetCo chief executive Phillip Walker said there was an ongoing testing program to monitor air quality. ''We have got air sampling monitors and they have stayed well within the applicable range for the chemicals they are testing for,'' he said.

Constant testing since the station opened had shown there were no diesel fumes above the appropriate level, he said.

''There is a group of people that continually complain about this. They have got the ability to have a blood test done. We've seen no empirical evidence to demonstrate there is any type of ill health. We can't get any readings to demonstrate there is any harm to them,'' he said.

Mr Walker said 42 million people passed through the station each year. ''There is no statistical or historical call-out of ambulances that would demonstrate that we have an issue here,'' he said.

Mr Walker, who also works in the station, said he had never smelt diesel fumes in his office.

Department of Transport spokeswoman Kirsten Taylor said air quality readings at the station had been continuously monitored by the private operator and were consistently within ''recommended parameters''.

[#Metro]

This is what is wrong with blindly applying "standards".
Information about the specifics at hand is completely ignored.

How were the standards formulated and what circumstances were in the mind of whoever made them up at the time?
And some of these standards might not be standards at all but guidelines. And standards change over time too...

[Golliwog]

I've never been there and I don't know the how its set up, but one possibility I can come up with about the sensors is that they may not be located in the right locations so that by the time the diesel fumes get to them they have dispersed, but the staff would be exposed to the concentrated fumes near the trains.