T Level Health and Science: Working Safely and Lawfully
Health and safety questions are mostly about resisting the plausible answer. A porter faces a load heavier than expected, and the option that says to lift it alone while keeping the back straight sounds like exactly what everyone is taught — but technique does not make an unsuitable load safe, and the right answer is to stop. A trolley falls into a walkway that happens to be empty, and the option saying nothing needs reporting is wrong for the same reason the event matters: with someone standing there it would have been an injury. A colleague offers to talk a worker through a procedure they have never been trained to do, and being talked through something is not supervision and does not confer competence. These ten situations work through that pattern across a workplace: telling a hazard from a risk, what a risk assessment is actually for as opposed to what it looks like, which measure in a list counts as an engineering control and where the others sit, what must happen before anyone works with a hazardous substance, what to do with equipment that is not working properly, how lone working is made safer, and what the law asks of the employee rather than only of the employer. Every workplace is invented, and no question describes anyone in a way that implies a diagnosis. Zestly is an independent study tool. It is not affiliated with any exam board and it is not an exam centre.
- Separate a hazard from the risk it creates
- State what a risk assessment is for, and what it does not do
- Place a control measure in the hierarchy: elimination, engineering, administrative, personal protective equipment
- Explain why a near miss is reported even though nobody was hurt
- Decline a task outside your competence, and see why being talked through it is not supervision
- Say what an employer must do before staff work with a hazardous substance
- Respond correctly to an unsuitable load and to equipment that is not working
- State the employee's own legal duty alongside the employer's
A porter is faced with a load heavier and more awkward than expected. — Stop, reassess, and get help or an aid rather than attempting the lift alone. The tempting option is to lift alone but keep the back straight, as though technique made any load safe; it does not.
Sample question
A cleaner at Brantwood Lodge, an invented care home, has just mopped a corridor that residents use to reach the dining room. Which statement correctly separates the hazard from the risk in this situation?
- There is no hazard because the floor will dry on its own.
- The wet floor is the hazard; the risk is the chance that someone slips on it and how badly they would be hurt.
- The wet floor is the risk; the hazard is the injury that results.
- The hazard and the risk are two words for the same thing.
See the answer
The wet floor is the hazard; the risk is the chance that someone slips on it and how badly they would be hurt.
A hazard is something with the potential to cause harm, while the risk is the likelihood of that harm occurring and its severity. The wet floor is the source of danger (hazard), and the possibility of a slip resulting in injury is the risk.
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