Health & Safety in France
May 20th, 2007 | 
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It’s time for the fields to be sprayed locally with fungicide and, as usual, we’ve all coughing and have sore throats even though we’re quite a bit away from where the spraying is being done at the moment.
Naturally, the concentration of the spray is a good deal higher around those doing the spraying but, of course, they’re wearing masks, aren’t they? Well, since it is France, no, they aren’t wearing any masks or other protective gear. This photo shows that there’s a mild breeze blowing which is great when the guy is driving the direction in this photo. I have a photo of him driving in the other direction but you can’t see the tractor in it as it’s totally enshrouded in the cloud from the spray.
Incidently, in case you were wonder, yes, the packaging that the spray comes in is marked with untold numbers of warnings about the necessity of wearing protective gear when using it. Not that you really need to be told that working in a cloud of fungicide is not a good idea.
This total disregard for health & safety is typical for the area. Granted, the guy doing the spraying is making his own decision to ignore the warnings as it’s his field but even in the supermarkets you constantly come across wet and slippy floors that are ignored by the staff. In the UK, they have 2 minutes to clear any spillage or they’re legally liable, here it seems like hours are fine (and, yes, we have been in a supermarket a few hours where a spillage we saw on the way in was still there as we went out).
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‘Health and Safety’ is very noticeably ignored in this region. Especially around the vineyards here. Today, a local teenage boy (from my sons’ school) was killed, crushed by a tractor, on a school excursion. I have seen countless children locally riding on, and dangling off, tractors and other farm machinery both on the roads, on private property and in the vineyards. I have even seen boys, that could not be more than 13/14 driving these vehicles on the local roads. It is a menace. In other countries this practice has been declared illegal. In Australia, underage minors are not permitted to operate farm machinery (due to the fatal accidents ) or be anywhere near them when they are operating. Only licensed persons/adults are supposed to be anywhere near equipment of this kind.
Not here in France though.
And it also says alot for ‘teacher supervision’ during school outings.