Thursday, July 29, 2004

OSH guidelines for the Sex Industry

OSH has recently issued its guidelines for occupational safety and health for the sex industry.  The resulting guidelines are a hundred pages in all and come with a warning that they contain sexually explicit material.  Reading through it, I picked up a new word ("neo-vagina") that I was hitherto unaware of and I still don't see the point for.  The report is mostly common-sensical precautions although there are some odd bits.

In particular, the guidelines contain two pages on smoking in the workplace, one page on occupational overuse syndrome which is all very commendable but when the only mention of certain implements is:

In order to avoid transmission of Hepatitis C, HIV and other
blood-borne infections, disposable razors and razor blades
must be disposed of in a sharps disposal container after being
used once. "Cutthroat" razors, scalpels and piercing tools
must be cleaned and sterilised after use with each client.

one wonders why OSH has not developed guidelines on how these implements should be used safely!  Likewise considering the unfortunate death of a Cricket Umpire, one would have thought that OSH could have given guidelines for safe beating of clients.  Another astonishing OSH lapse is that the expression "safe word" or similar simply does not appear in the guidelines! Given that several mental patients and arrested persons have been killed through the use of improper restraints, I simply cannot fathom why OSH has turned a blind eye on these topics.  Did the guideline developers have to have a lie-down or what?