Health and Safety and women in stained glass making

There may be some tightening of the controls that could bring them within the limit.

Have their respirators been face fit tested annually and additionally if there are any changes in the face e.g. dental work. Could full face respirators be used with breathing air supplied?

Is the local exhaust ventilation hood in the correct position. Are there specialist shrouds for on-tool extraction.

Can a limit be set on how many hours an individual spends in this task. Have they been properly instructed in the use of respirators. How often are they changing their gloves. Lots of possibilities.

Also they already use respirators, ventilators and ppe.

In that case they need to use equipment like that used for handling nuclear material or robot arms or something.

There is no alternative to lead in stained glass windows.
Also they already use respirators, ventilators and ppe.

That must be a can of worms to administer as it relies on the woman 'declaring' menopause? Or maybe it is deemed to happen at eg 50 for all women.

In my menopausal 'lived experience' that won't be a problem because we menopausal types never shut up about being menopausal. 😂

Also I believe the article said there were two considered limits for exposure for women, one pre menopause and one post.

That must be a can of worms to administer as it relies on the woman 'declaring' menopause? Or maybe it is deemed to happen at eg 50 for all women.

Great question! I'm not an expert on lead specifically, but as with all other hazardous materials, it will be about looking at the most common routes to exposure (inhalation of dust, inadvertent ingestion from direct skin contact, or whatever) and mitigating those. Unfortunately, there's only so much you can do to reduce contact if you're actually conserving an object that contains lead: it generally requires you to spend hours and hours working in close proximity! Most of the time, it's a tremendous privilege to spend so much time caring for something ancient, but occasionally it can also be to the detriment of the conservator.

One of the problems with heritage conservation is that until recently it has been very overlooked and not afforded as much pay or status as other professions that require an equal amount of skill and education. As I said, it's a female-heavy profession, so I'm sure this is not a coincidence! And there's definitely a connection with the fact that it requires care and patience and empathy (see also nursing), which are seen as "feminine" attributes. Until recently, there has been a pervasive attitude that it's such a privilege to be doing the job at all that to ask for fair pay or working conditions - short-term contracts are rife - is a bit distasteful. It's a vocation, so conservators should be grateful to be paid at all! Luckily, this has changed a lot in the last 20 years - partly because we started to organise collectively, and partly because it became a more "sciency" profession, and therefore more "respectable" - but I think there are still comparisons to be made with how other "female" professions such as teaching and nursing have struggled to be respected.

Sorry, that's all a long way off the original topic, but still relevant to this board, I hope!

This doesn't just affect stained glass manufacturing, it's any industry that uses lead.

There are still a fair few (older) properties in the UK that use lead piping in the water supply. They've not been kept because it's fun, it's because there's been no other option for a water supply and water companies have made them as safe as possible to be used. This would prevent female plumbers from working on them. It's a niche part of the trade but quite lucrative I'd imagine.

Lead is dangerous but you can't just ban it out of existence. It's still about in the older trades and crafts and has to be accommodated.

Firstly, the people featured in the article are not making stained glass: they're specialist conservators who are carrying out remedial treatments and care for very fragile, very valuable medieval stained glass. I used to work in a very similar area myself and I know several people who work in this field: it's not something the Job Centre would send you to do and many of the conservators working there will have postgraduate-level training.

Health and safety in heritage conservation is taken very seriously as it often involves using chemicals, use of x-radiography or being exposed to other hazards such as moulds or toxic pesticides used to treat objects decades ago. Conservators routinely use PPE and take other appropriate mitigation measures such as working under extraction where possible. I am certain that the people working at YGT will be protected as much as possible - indeed, it's clear that they're already having regular blood tests to monitor their lead exposure.

I lurk on this board a lot (and post occasionally), but it's disappointing to see so many wrong-headed reactions to this story. The "sex and gender" angle to this story, IMO, is not so much that women are being treated differently from men in terms of occupational hazard exposure (after all, they have different biology...), or whether women can identify our of these limits, but that heritage conservation is an overwhelmingly female profession (around 65-70% of conservators are women, and the rates are much higher in some specialisms). If you stop employing women because you can't mitigate their risk of lead exposure, then you will soon find that you are unable to employ enough stained glass conservators, full stop.

Its not pointless or stupid to discuss what the rules are and how they could / should work. Rules and laws that don't work properly are the cause of a lot of grief in society, currently.

Nobody is 'wailing' either - pretty sexist way to label women having a discussion 🙄

That way lies madness after all we still allow smoking and alcohol which are far more health damaging and certainly don’t produce anything of beauty.

So typical. When jobs are thin on the ground the patriarchy sets to work excluding the marginalised. First it’s immigrants, then it’s the disabled, then women and minorities…

The job centre can't force people to work there, it's specialist skilled work!

And before anyone argues 'what about the cleaners etc', if you read the article it's explained that the crafts people actually have to handle the lead to do the job. Its not floating about in the air.

Its an interesting conundrum. The people there love their work and want to continue do it.

Edit to add:by that logic nobody could do any kind of job with the slightest possibility of risk - no drivers, nobody working at height, nobody working in nuclear power stations. Where should be draw the line?

A very detailed report in The Times very recently also mentions that the workers restoring glass in Notre Dame had to work in Hazmat suits.
We, UK Gov determined to align with EU. Is it really necessary?

What if the affected women say they are men? Good question!

To be perfectly honest instead of us trying to identify out of being protected from lead poisoning (ffs) I really think men deserve this protection too. Why do we even need stained glass windows more than we need to not get exposed to lead, for which there is no lower safe limit? It accumulates in the brain forever. Just ban stained glass and other stupid similar trappings of “civilisation” that are actually pointless frifferies that we now know are dangerous to produce. And seriously how stupid about basic science do you have to be to wail “my body my choice (to get lead poisoning)!!!!!” shut the place down so the Jobcentre can’t force people to work there.

That would be really interesting wouldn't it?

I wonder what would happen if the woman in the article did this?

What if they say they're men?

No it isn't. If they say that they are women then they use the limit set for women. No outing required.

No, this is an issue, and employers need to enable their staff to stay safe (after asking questions and thinking about it, I realise this is the case).

As others have said, the employee in the article is close. Tightening up procedures and appropriate equipment will likely get her under the limit, and will have a similarly good effect for other employees too.

And it's not 'value as incubators' anyway - it's a real issue, that if the employee were to become pregnant, then it will harm the baby - it's a good thing that this is being reviewed and monitored, it's not a punishment.

I'd prefer men didn't have higher levels of lead in their blood than they have to too, and employers complaining/saving money by letting people have higher levels than they have to isn't something I support.

So, women are not to be trusted with making decisions about their own bodies, lives and careers because they need to be forced to retain their value as incubators for men to use in the future. Is that it?

Yes, but the article says the mfr in question uses every possible mitigation.

That's obviously not true. I see no fume hood or extractor. I don't see robot arms or the sort of precautions used when handling nuclear material. They just want to carry on without changing the methods of working despite the danger.

I work with health hazards in the workplace, although I don't work with lead specifically. The woman in the article has lead levels only slightly over the new limit. I suspect a review of the controls they have in place may reduce her exposure to below the limit and this may turn out to be a non issue.

They say they already use PPE, respirators and fans, but if their workers are still getting exposure, there is likely to be some improvement possible in those controls. The usual issue is poor local exhaust ventilation and this is tricky to get right, but it's likely some adjustments could be made and this would be to the benefit of all workers.

Whenever the HSE introduce new requirements there is always doom from various industries about how impossible it is, but generally they do manage to comply.