Regulation Information Hazard assessment Hazard assessment refers to an evaluation of the workplace by the safety officer or safety manager/supervisor to identify sources of hazards or potential hazards to workers. Hazardous conditions in the workplace increase in numbers and complexities as technology advances. By identifying problems and correcting them, you not only promote workplace safety, but you save your company money by avoiding production down-time, injury and illness claims, and the cost of training new workers. Several OSHA regulations require that a hazard assessment be performed, and that all data or findings collected be analyzed and organized, and that written records are kept. For instance, at 1910.132(d)(1) and (d)(2), OSHA requires that the “employer shall assess the workplace to determine if hazards are present, or are likely to be present.” The assessment is then used to determine the type of personal protective equipment that might be required. Other federal regulations also require a workplace hazard assessment. The Environmental Protection Agency specifies that a hazard assessment be performed as part of a written Risk Management Plan at 40 CFR 68-Risk management program. However, the risks being assessed here are a little different than the worker safety hazards being sought by OSHA. Performing Workplace Hazard Assessment As several regulations require a workplace hazard assessment, it only makes sense to perform a single, comprehensive analysis and obtain all of the needed data at one time. Since a hazard assessment involves an examination of your entire workplace, it's difficult to pin down all of the procedures involved into a brief statement. In general, your program will need to proceed along the following lines: First, conduct comprehensive baseline worksite surveys for safety and health and periodic comprehensive update surveys; Analyze planned and new facilities, processes, materials, and equipment; and Perform routine job hazard analyses. Provide for regular site safety and health inspections, so that new or previously missed hazards and failures in hazard controls are identified. Remember to include employees in your examinations—do not underestimate the value of their insider's perspective on the job. Provide for investigation of accidents and "near miss" incidents, so that their causes and means for their prevention are identified. Analyze injury and illness trends over time, so that patterns with common causes can be identified and prevented. Perform Job Safety Analyses Job safety analyses (JSAs) are required as part of a full-scale worksite analysis, and should be conducted with care by a knowledgeable supervisor along with employees responsible for each selected job. JSAs consist of examining each job within your department in order to identify and correct existing and potential hazards involved. There are four essential steps involved in setting up a successful job safety analysis program: Selecting jobs for analysis; Breaking each selected job down into steps; Identifying the hazards associated with each step; and Eliminating the hazards. Hazard recognition There are any number of hazards employees may be exposed to in their normal work duties. Contact with electrical hazards, the chance of a slip or fall, and exposure to loud noises affect workers daily. Ergonomically designed tools, equipment, and workstations increase worker comfort and productivity. Exposure to chemicals, radiation, and temperature extremes also contribute to hazards on many jobs. Recognizing where these hazards exist is the first step in making your workplace safe. Following is a list of the most common hazards an employee is exposed to on a daily basis. Not all will apply to your company, so you will only need to address those that are present. You may also need to add categories for hazards that are unique to your field. Chemical Exposure hazards Exposure to chemicals can pose serious physical or health hazards. They are usually grouped according to the type of hazards they present. Physical hazards Certain chemicals due to their physical properties such as combustibility, flammability, or reactivity exhibit physical hazards. This category includes the following classes of chemicals: Flammable solids or liquids. Combustible liquids. Explosives. Organic peroxide. Oxidizers. Pyrophoric materials (may ignite spontaneously in air at temperatures of 130° F or below). Unstable materials. Water-reactive materials. Health hazards Health hazard chemicals are those that cause acute or chronic health effects after exposure. It may be an instantaneous, obvious effect, such as death following inhalation of cyanide. However, many physical reactions don’t occur for days, weeks, or even years after exposure. Some examples of chemicals that present health hazards to workers include the following Carcinogens—cancer causing agents such as formaldehyde or benzene. Toxic agents—lawn and garden insecticides, fungicides, and arsenic compounds. Reproductive toxins—thalidomide and nitrous oxide. Irritants—bleaches and ammonia. Corrosives—battery acid and caustic sodas. Sensitizers—creosote and epoxy resins. Organ-specific agents that act on specific organs or parts of the body—sulfuric acid, which affects the skin and asbestos, which affects the lungs. Electrical hazards Carelessness and failure to follow set procedures causes many of the deaths linked to electrical hazards, which include shock and burns from arc-blasts, explosions, and fires. These accidents can be avoided, for the most part, if you use safe electrical equipment and work practices. When you are doing an electrical hazard assessment of your workplace, check to see that the following are being used wherever possible: Insulators of glass, mica, rubber or plastic; Electrical protective devices, including fuses, circuit breakers, and ground-fault. Guarding of dangerous equipment in separate rooms or remote areas. Grounding for paths of dangerous currents. Ergonomics Ergonomics means arranging the environment to fit the worker. Utilizing ergonomic principles in the workplace will help reduce stress and eliminate many potential injuries and disorders associated with the overuse of muscles, bad posture, and repetitive motions. Workers' hands, wrists, arms, shoulders, backs, and legs may be subjected to thousands of repetitive twisting, forceful or flexing motions during a typical workday. When coupled with poorly designed work environments, tools, and job duties, workers may be continually subjected to both physical and psychological stressors. A combination of these factors rather than any single factor may be responsible for worker's psychological or musculoskeletal distresses. Therefore, it is important to identify all risk factors that may be present in the job. If exposed to certain ergonomic hazards for a long period, employees can develop strained vision, hearing loss, permanent back, neck and shoulder injury, and other serious health complications. In fact, ergonomic hazards are the number one cause for employee absenteeism at most companies. Prioritizing Hazards When knowledgeable people conduct hazard assessments and develop specific findings and recommendations, the employer must then address each finding, document the actions taken, and communicate the actions to the affected employees. Since the number of potential hazards discovered is bound to be overwhelming, it falls to the employer to rank them in order of importance and to decide which recommendations to address immediately and which to save for a later date or, in some rare cases, dismiss altogether. In order to assign priority, consider the hazards according to the following guidelines to rank hazard severity: I. Catastrophic—may cause death or a complete facility loss. II. Critical—may cause severe injury, severe occupational illness, or major property damage. III. Marginal—may cause minor injury or minor occupational illness, or major property damage. IV. Negligible—probably would not affect personnel safety or health and, therefore, less than a lost workday, but nevertheless is in violation of specific criteria. Controlling Hazards Once an employer has a good understanding of what creates the hazards and has given the most serious hazards priority, he or she is ready to make recommendations to prevent them. In general, the following actions can be taken: Find a new method of doing the job (i.e., analyze various ways of reaching the safest possible method. Consider work-saving tools and equipment.) Change or modify the physical conditions that create the hazards. Eliminate hazards still present by changing work procedures. Reduce the necessity of doing a job or the frequency with which it must be performed. (Reducing job frequency contributes to safety only in that it limits exposure. Make every effort to eliminate hazards and to prevent potential accidents through changing physical or environmental conditions.) Provide adequate and effective personal protective equipment (PPE) for your employees, at no cost to them. Review the hazards and the recommended solutions with all employees performing the job and ask for their suggestions. Their ideas about the hazards and proposed recommendations may be valuable. Be sure that they understand what they are required to do and the reasons for any new procedures. Also explain the need for recommended PPE, so that they understand the hazards and how the PPE will keep them safe. Document your hazard assessment Doing the hazard assessment is only the first step. You need to document everything: what was done, what methods were used, what your findings were, what corrective actions were taken when the next assessment will take place. Taking appropriate action is, of course, the desired goal of a successful hazard assessment. Detailed recordkeeping can facilitate both verification of compliance, as well as visualization of hazard patterns. When you see in your records that every department has problems with forklift collisions with pedestrians, you know that you need an overhaul in that area. Therefore, recordkeeping becomes a very important part of the hazard assessment process. Records should be complete, up to date, and legible. Document your activities in all elements of the process safety program. Essential records, including those legally required for workers' compensation, insurance audits, and government inspections, must be maintained as long as the actual need exists. Keeping records of your activities, such as policy statements train session for management and employees, safety and health meetings held, information distributed to employees, and medical arrangements made is greatly encouraged and, in same cases, required by OSHA. Records to maintain To be able to use your hazard assessment to improve your facility's safety performance, you need to have the big picture. What is going on in the workplace, what processes, what equipment, which employees? Use the following list as a starting point as to what records you should maintain. Add any information that seems relevant to you. Personnel records OSHA 300 Log of work-related injuries and illnesses First aid logs “Near miss” information Workers' compensation records Job transfers Employee exposure records Inventory data Air and workplace monitoring records Process diagrams that indicate emissions and releases Records of PPE used Engineering controls in place Hazard assessment methods All hazard assessment results Corrective actions taken Frequency for conducting audits Chemical inventory Employee training Copyright © 2007 J. J. Keller & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.