ABSTRACT
Health and safety legislation varies considerably from one country to another. Within the EU, legislation is based on framework directives that determine common minimum standards throughout the community. In most countries modern health and safety legislation is ‘risk assessment’ based whereby every work process involving a significant degree of risk must be assessed in advance of any practical work. Risk assessment is the current basis of modern health and safety legislation. The requirement to carry out risk assessment has been the cause of much anxiety and complaint; the concept should not be too difficult for almost anyone to grasp. The hazards involved with the preparation of a decalcified thin section of a vertebral body are identical with respect to chemical and mechanical hazards regardless of the source of the sample. Even within the limited topic of processing samples of bone it would be impossible to cover every possible hazard and quantify risk.
