Hazardous substances obvious risks

Act (1974) provides the main framework for health and safety, it is the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) regulations of 1994 and 1996 that impose strict legal requirements for risk assessment wherever chemicals are used. Within this context, the use of the terms hazard and risk are very important. A hazardous substance is one that has the ability to cause harm, whereas risk is about the likelihood that the substance may cause harm. Risk is often associated with the quantity of material being used. For example, a large volume of a flammable substance obviously poses a greater risk than a very small quantity. Your laboratory will operate its own safety scheme, so ensure that you are aware of what it is and follow it. 

The assessment procedure is vital, and it is something new to be brought into the sphere of Regulations. Assessment will be incorporated into the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations, which are proposed (from 1987/88) to cover all work-related aspects of the use of hazardous substances, and they will follow a very similar pattern to the Lead Regulations. The purpose of assessment in the Lead Regulations is to determine (a) compliance with the Lead in Air Standard (b) whether exposure to lead is significant (c) what action is required and (d) any risk to other people. Obviously, the more lead there is in the workplace, and the more complex the process, the more detailed the assessment will need to be. 

Except in an emergency, running, or any over-hurried activity, should be forbidden in and around the laboratories, as should be practical jokes or other irresponsible behaviour. Eating, drinking and smoking in the laboratory should also be forbidden these constitute a further, avoidable, risk of the ingestion of toxic substances, and in the case of smoking an obvious fire hazard. 

It is important to remember that all these tests should be preceded by an appropriate risk assessment in order to implement all the reasonable health and. safely measures. For instance the use of such toxic chemicals as dichloromethane is the subject of COSHH (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health) regulation. Other activities where latent energy is involved, as in the application of hydrostatic pressure, and scattering of specimen debris from a fracture test, also pose a degree of hazard. Obviously the full circumstances are best known to the actual people engaged in any specific work, and therefore they are best placed to conduct a risk assessment and establish appropriate health and safety measures practices. 

We have seen in the previous chapter that, as well as an obvious moral duty, systems designers and software engineers may have legal responsibilities under statutes such as the Health and Safety at Work Act to ensure that other people are not put at risk by their acts or omissions. Despite its apparently specific subject area, the general approach to safety matters contained in the Health and Safety at Work Act and associated regulations need not be confined to workplace safety. Indeed, the sequence— assess, control and monitor—found in the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations and the European regulations is capable of application to... 

Risk assessments need to be canried out by experienced and competent people who are knowledgeable about the hazards of the substances, the equipment and the operations being reviewed. It is a subjective process which cannot normally be validated mathematically, and is essentially practical. Those involved in the assessment need to think logically and laterally, look beyond the obvious and have good interactive skills to tease out crucial information. 

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