Unlike other countries Australia and New Zealand do not have a an incident register that is available to the general public or industry professionals such as independent auditors or assessors.
In North America workplace incidents are investigated by OSHA, much like our own regulators in Australia. However in North America the incidents are investigated and recorded on the OSHA website (unlike our Australian and NZ regulators), where details of the incident are explained, including any penalties issued to the company.
This information is made available to the general public. As such you can get a reasonable understanding of incidents specific to static electricity or lightning.
This is not a criticism of our regulatory processes in Australia and NZ.
Far from it. The work done by SafeWork and WorkSafe is exemplary.
It is the way in which our laws are written that do not enable the
Australian and NZ regulators to act in the same manner as their
counterparts in North America.
This makes it very challenging to determine if incidents of injury or
fires/explosions related to static electricity or lightning in Australia
are on the rise or in decline as an industry.
SafeWork and WorkSafe regularly issue safety alerts/bulletins to industry.
In 2015, the Centre for Static Electricity and Lightning Protection
CSELP organised the first multi national collection of data and began compiling the information so that it could be shared with
those individuals who attended the annual conference held by CSELP.
The information for Australia relies heavily on the investigations conducted by SEC and other assessors, auditors willing to share their data. The information does not name the company where the incident occurs but rather the type of incident and cause.
It is safe to say, that the number of incidents relating to static electricity and lightning in workplaces across Australia in particular are rising significantly year on year. Of particular note is the increasing amount of LTIs sustained by workers and direct contact injuries.
One of the more worrying concerns is the amount of processes above 100+kV.
