Health & Safety

When MATES in Construction NZ heard from more than 2300 workers through the 2025 Industry Well-being Survey, supported by ASB, the message was clear: connection matters. Not in a vague or abstract way, but in the everyday moments that shape life on site. In fact, 27% of workers said mateship and social connection positively contributed […]

Fast-moving floodwater dramatically increases the risk to urban pedestrians, new modelling has shown.  A Wellington case study showed that walking and driving routes to hospitals, public transport and essential services can be cut off during peak flooding. Researchers overlaid flood risk maps onto Wellington’s transport network to assess whether people could reach essential services during […]

WorkSafe is calling on all industries to follow through on controlling risks once they are identified after a gas explosion burned a forklift driver.  In March 2024, the forklift caught fire, igniting LPG that was being released from condemned cylinders. Several nine-kilogram gas bottles exploded, fuelling the fire. The driver was hospitalised with burns and […]

Six children’s coloured sand products prompted widespread school closures across Australia and New Zealand in November 2025 after laboratory testing detected traces of tremolite and chrysotile asbestos. By mid‑November, dozens of schools in New Zealand and over 70 in Australia’s ACT had temporarily shut, while hundreds more sought guidance from regulators. The products, rainbow sand from Educational […]

A new agreement between WorkSafe and Forest360 means forestry roads nationwide are set to become safer. In response to a death on one of its sites, Forest360 has agreed to fund a range of actions. 59-year-old Greg Stevens was killed when his logging truck and trailer rolled while negotiating a tight bend on a Coromandel […]

The Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay region had the highest incidence rate of workplace injury claims in 2024, per Stats NZ data. There were 120 claims per 1,000 full-time equivalent employees (FTEs). Yet the national incidence rate for work-related injury claims was 80 claims per 1,000 FTEs, the lowest rate since 2002. Trades workers had the […]