Hazard and Hazard Recognition Methods

By definition, a hazard is anything that has the potential to cause harm to people, damage to property or environment, or loss to process. OSHA defines hazard as the potential for harm that is associated with a condition or activity that if left uncontrolled can result in injury or illness. Meanwhile, according to OHSAS 18001:1999, hazard is source or situation with a potential for harm in terms of human injury or illness health, damage to property, damage to the workplace environment, or a combination of these.

Hazard recognition or hazard identification is vitally important in accident prevention. By recognizing hazards’ characteristics and properties, we can clearly determine proper controls. Unfortunately, the majority of us sometimes overlook to recognize hazards.

Hazard Recognition Methods

There are many hazard recognition methods. The more hazard recognition methods we know, the bigger our chances to recognize all hazards that exist in workplaces. A hazard might not be identified by a certain method, but it can be detected by another method. Principally, we need to assure that hazard recognition is completely done.

The following are the most useful hazard recognition methods:
1. Pre-Use Analysis
2. Multi-Step Planning Process
3. Work Permitting
4. Equipment Inspections
5. Suggestion Method
6. Walk through Safety and Health Audits
7. Safety Patrol

Now, lets talks about these methods one by one.

Pre-Use Analysis can be applied before any new equipment, device, instrumentation, personal protective equipment, machine, tool, plant facility, etc are used. This method is applied before exposure to hazards.

Multi-Step Planning Process is applied before hazard exposure and applied to every task, job and activity. To apply this method simply asks a series of questions before doing the task, job or activity. The question should be similar to:
a. What am I going to do?
b. What is the purpose to do this job, task or activity?
c. How will I do that job, task or activity?
d. How could I get hurt doing this job, task or activity?
e. What will I do to prevent accident (injury, illness health)?

Work Permitting is issued before the job, task or activity done. Some questions asked and a checklist shall be completed to assured that hazards are not overlooked. Commonly, including in the checklist are analysis of toxic gas (such as carbon monoxide), oxygen sufficiency, flammable gas concentration, etc.

Equipment Inspection is implemented to any equipment before it is used or put into operation. Equipment inspection is planned and organized to check overall equipment conditions, safety protective equipment, guarding, emergency stop, etc.

In Suggestion Method, every worker is encouraged to propose or suggest potential hazard (and control) that are contained in a job, task or activity. Workers consider their past time experiences on the shop floor and field to give suggestion and this is very good safety habit. This method can be used for improving current hazard identification list.

Safety Patrol can be carried out by every worker in the plant site, not only by persons who are in charge of health and safety matters. Safety patrol may be done during an equipment running, plant operation, plant shut down or whenever it is intended to identify potential hazards.

The best way to use these hazard recognition methods is by combining these methods one with the others.

The next question is when is the right time to apply these hazard recognition methods? Of course before exposure to the hazards is the best time, because at that time no one was injured, ill or death, and no property damage. However, during a job, task or activity is being done hazard recognition is still important especially in accident prevention, and we can stop or cancel the job, task or activity at any time whenever we see a potential hazard to cause injury, illness health or plant facility damage.

Hazards may also be recognized after a job, task or activity has been completely performed and we can plan hazard control improvement to that job.

40 Ideas for Safety Meeting Topics

Safety meeting is the right time to discuss about health and safety related matters in the workplace. Safety meeting can be held regularly or incidentally as a response on occurrence of a specific health and safety problem or after an incident or accident happens.

Ideally, safety meeting focuses on just one specific topic. But, what kind of topics do we have to discuss? Here are some topics that you can use in the safety meeting:

1. Safety policy
2. Applicable safety regulations
3. Compliance status on safety regulations
4. New safety regulation
5. Incident and accident investigation
6. Safety audit findings
7. OHSAS 18001 surveillance findings
8. Safety patrol finding
9. Personal protective equipments
10. Eye protection
11. Hearing protection
12. Hand and foot injuries
13. Risk assessment for new plant facility
14. On-way traffic control in the plant site
15. Pressure vessel regular testing
16. Working around electricity
17. Emergency response procedure
18. Construction safety
19. Working in a confined space
20. Lockout and tag-out programs
21. Heat stress
22. Hazards identification or recognition
23. How to read Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS)
24. How to handle compressed gas safely
25. Hazardous material preservation and handling
26. Slips, trips and falls
27. Near miss incident reporting
28. Fire extinguisher usage
29. Safety precaution in case of fire
30. Maintenance of fire fighting equipments
31. Safety control for the transformer yard
32. Fire fighting placement and location indication
33. Self-inspection system
34. Chemical exposure control
35. Safety training program
36. Gas cylinder control and protection
37. Hazardous material symbol and label implementation
38. Loss control report issued by plant insurance company
39. Safety work permit system
40. Truck driver safety

It had better to provide schedule for every safety meeting, especially for regular safety meeting. Don’t forget to file them when you have finished using the materials. Later you will need those files.

I believe the list above does not cover all the chemical plant safety related topics. Your input and feed back would be very valuable and I will add it to the list.

An Introduction to A 5-Minutes Safety Talk

According to www.whscc.nb.ca, safety talk is a hands-on way to remind workers that health and safety are important on the job. While www.ofswa.on.ca describes safety talk as a brief meeting held on regular basis with workers and their supervisors to discuss problems and concerns about health and safety. Principally, safety talk deals with specific topic, subject and problem which are health and safety related in the workplace.

The objectives of a safety talk are to remind workers about potential hazards in their workplaces and help workers to recognize and control these hazards.

Safety talks are best delivered by people who are responsible for workers’ safety and health. They may be supervisors, health and safety officers, members of safety committee or anyone with health and safety duties. Even in some companies every worker is scheduled to give safety talk, in order to maintain safety awareness among them.

So what kind of message should we deliver during safety talk? Are there any standard messages? Basically there are no standard safety talk messages. As long as we choose a specific topic, subject or problem which relate to health and safety in the workplace, it will be enough. But the important point is safety talk message has to be well prepared, because it should be finished in about 5 minutes. Please check this page for safety talk example.

Now it is the time to set up safety talk schedule. We can perform it once a week, three times a week or once a day. It merely depends on company’s OHS policy, job risks, workplace conditions and worker’s skills.

Choose most appropriate location where we will do safety talk. Wherever possible, choose the real workplace, or at least as close as possible to the real workplace. For instance, if we would like to perform safety talk about confined space work hazards, do it at a tank, at an opened reactor column or near a vessel.

If possible use real tools, equipments, materials (for example chemicals), procedures and work conditions to demonstrate key points of the safety talk we are talking about, and to make it is easy to be understood.

Don’t forget to make a safety talk record. Record the date, location, leader, attendants and the topic. Make sure that all attendants have signed on the attendant list. Also make a copy of the safety talk material and keep it together with the records for future reference.

Finally, I would like to stress that although safety talks only take 5 minutes to finish, but it helps employers and workers to remind importance of health and safety, recognize and control hazards, and keeps workers awareness alive. Remember, there are much potential hazards inside chemical plant.

Where to Find Free Printable Safety Signs

It usually takes time to design safety sign for our own use. Even if we don’t know what content of safety sign we should write and the standard design, it requires longer time to design. Free printable safety signs will be very helpful.

Actually, there are many sources of free printable safety signs available. Those safety signs can be downloaded. Some safety signs are free to be customized.

Well, now let’s see the free sources of safety signs where we can find printable and downloadable safety signs. They provide OSHA-standard safety signs from numbers of categories such as OSHA Warning Sign, OSHA Notice Sign, OSHA Caution Sign, OSHA Danger Sign, and OSHA Quality Control

1. online-sign.com offers you to create your own safety sign, customized it and print it out. Or you can customize the existing safety signs.
2. signs.gkcd.com offers you the ability to print out OSHA safety signs. Just browse printable OSHA safety signs and print them out.
3. freesignage.com lets you print free OSHA safety and heath related signs. Safety sign categories available: OSHA warning, OSHA Caution, OSHA Danger, OSHA Notice, OSHA Quality Control.
4. printablesigns.net offers lots of free printable safety signs.

Almost all of the safety signs are in PDF format. If you would like to make any editing to the PDF files, you should convert them into editable file format like Ms Word. To convert PDF format to Ms Word you can do it here.

Another thing that we shall consider in designing safety signs is applicable local regulatory in your country. This is important because it affects your company’s regulatory compliance status.

40 Free Safety Slogans for the Workplaces

Safety promotion or socialization is an effective way to maintain workers awareness in the plant site against safety. Safety promotion is a form of safety communications.

One of the most common ways is by utilization of safety slogan. People may also call it by safety sayings, safety quotes or safety motto. Whatever it is called, the main purpose is the same, namely how to use effective words to remind workers about safety in their workplaces.

When choosing safety slogans, we need to consider its relevancy to the workplace hazards, using positive words, to be specific, easy to understand, clear and to the point. We can brainstorm to make safety slogans for the workplace in plant site by just looking around it. See what are the conditions and behavior.

We could also make safety slogans that are suitable to be placed at any workplace around the plant site. For instance, safety slogans likes “safety first”. To help us preparing our own safety slogans, the 40 free safety slogans below may give you idea to start with.

1. Safety is no accident.
2. Think before you act.
3. Safety is forever.
4. Never forget about safety.
5. Safety means zero accident.
6. Keep no accident record.
7. Remember safety! You family is waiting for you at home.
8. Safety is our first priority.
9. No safety, no business.
10. Stop accidents before they stop you.
11. Come safely, work safely and arrive home safely.
12. Work safely means success.
13. Keep safety at the first step.
14. Make your workplace safe and comport.
15. Safety is our concern.
16. With safety, we win.
17. The safe way is the only way.
18. Get smart! Use safety from the start.
19. Be safety minded.
20. Your work and safety can not be separated.
21. Safety is the biggest investment.
22. Learn from others mistakes; don’t have others learn from you.
23. Safety is a must.
24. Work safely today and everyday.
25. Always talks about safety before you start working.
26. Do it safely.
27. Think safety before you work.
28. You can’t get home unless you’re safe.
29. Ignoring a warning can cause much mourning.
30. Remember unprepared means unsafe.
31. Safety is the first gate to success.
32. Safe workers are smooth workers.
33. Safety is our main concern.
34. Always think safety before you work.
35. Working without safety means failure.
36. Follow the procedures, keep safety in mind.
37. Save tomorrow. Act safely today.
38. Safety is a journey.
39. Yes! Safety is our business.
40. Safety is the best way to work.

If you think you can’t find appropriate safety slogans for your workplace from the list above, then go to the workplace and look around it. It could give you many ideas. Just write it down on a paper when it comes to your mind. Write as many safety slogans as can. Apply them at the right place in your workplace to make people could see them easily.

15 Reasons Why Chemical Plant Safety is Important?

chemical plant potentially suffering from illness, injuries even death.

In fact, chemical plants are full of potential hazards and could cause accidents and disasters if they are not treated properly. Hazards may come from hazardous chemicals, electrical, high temperature, high pressure, unsafe acts and conditions, work at elevated area, etc. Hence, safety in a chemical plant holds an important role.

There may be hundreds of reason why safety in chemical plant is vitally important. And the list below is only a part of them. Indeed, I intend to remind about importance of safety and why we have to make safety become the first consideration in mind.

1. Safety protects workers, employers and all people in the plant including strangers from illness, injuries or death.
2. Ensuring survival of company’s business.
3. It prevents company’s property and facility from damage.
4. It enhances company’s reputation.
5. It teaches people in the plant how to work safely.
6. It helps company to achieve its targets and objective.
7. Keeping company away from law suits and penalties.
8. It keeps workers to feel comport, happy and safe.
9. Company will be avoided from unnecessary cost.
10. It keeps workers awareness alive.
11. Safety teaches everyone in the plant to pay attention to their workplaces and surrounding.
12. It keeps customer’s confidence to do business with the company.
13. Safety program is a cost-effective decision for the company.
14. Safety is able to reduce employee’s turn over and increase productivity.
15. Safety can prevent production process interruption and shut down.

I do understand that the list is too short to show you how important safety is. Your feedback and comment will add value to the list. Please leave them in the comment form and I am willing to revise the list accordingly.It is no doubt that workers who are working in