DIGEST 2006 - Sabita

designed to assist road authorities
in the selection of proven
substitutes for carcinogenic and
environmentally aggressive coal
tar products. The guideline focuses
on priming granular bases and
precoating surfacing stone, and is
intended to serve as an interim
guideline until documents such as
the outdated TRH1: Prime coats
and bituminous curing membranes
(1986) have been updated.
Despite Sabita’s
wide-ranging
awareness campaign,
and the lead taken by
the South African
National Roads
Agency Limited
(SANRAL), the
Provincial Council
Western Cape and
the Gauteng
Department of Public
Transport, Roads and
Works, none of South
Africa’s 248 municipalities nor any
of the six metropolitan councils
have yet undertaken to prohibit
the use of coal tar products in
their road infrastructure projects.
This is a problem demanding
incisive action, as it is
inconceivable that professional
engineers should continue to allow
environmentally harmful and
unhealthy products to be specified
for road construction when there
is widespread substitution of this
product with alternatives that are
less harmful to workers or the
environment.
Another initiative to advance the
introduction of global norms and
standards in South Africa is the
introduction of the first plenary
session, Health, Safety and the
Environment (HSE), at CAPSA’07
this year. This session, convened
within the context of the COSHEC
business plan, will have
distinguished speakers from
Europe and the USA presenting
up-to-date papers on topics
covering legislation on the
registration, evaluation and
assessment of chemical
substances, the
challenges faced
and dealt with by
the asphalt
industry in both
Europe and the
USA to meet the
needs of society in
respect of HSE,
and future
industrial trends
to ensure that
processes are
sustainable and
appropriate to
reduced reliance on nonrenewable
energy resources.
No
municipalities
have yet
undertaken
to prohibit
the use of
coal tar
products
Workplace safety
To mitigate employee exposure to
injury or ill-health arising from the
handling of bituminous products,
Sabita recently launched a
bitumen safety course, which
kicked off in June 2006 when 25
employees from member
companies took part in the BitSafe
train-the-trainers courses in
Stellenbosch, Johannesburg and
Durban. These trainers will now
head up comprehensive training
courses at their own companies to
entrench awareness of the hazards
associated with the handling of
bituminous binders, and to
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