Health and safety risks, precautions

API is not undertaking to meet the duties of employers, manufacturers, or suppliers to warn and properly train and equip their employees, and others exposed, concerning health and safety risks and precautions, nor undertaking their obligations under local, state, or federal laws. 

NOTE Observe adequate safety precautions for all cooling tower maintenance workers to protect them against not only the general occupational health and safety risks but also the special risks from Legionella. 

When diagnosing stakeholder value it is important to understand that perceptions can be as important as scientific facts. For example, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) producers defend PVC on the basis of scientific arguments such as energy efficiency, low biomass accumulation, and product safety in normal use. Customers such as Nike, Sony, and Shaw Industries that have committed to eliminating PVC in their products as a precaution for their customers due to perceived health and environmental risks, are unlikely to change their perspective based on additional scientific facts provided by the chemical industry. As in the PVC case, manufacturers are vulnerable to value loss as a result of their customers perceptions of risks. 

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations already require risk assessments of work activities to be carried out to identify risks arising from the use of lifting equipment and the appropriate precautions required to deal with these risks. The level of precaution will depend on the degree of risk assessed, and should reduce the risk to as low a level as is reasonably practicable. Particular hazards to be considered are equipment striking a person or object and the consequences of equipment failing. 

Legislation requires the adhesive supplier to label and classify products (as flammable, irritant, harmful, corrosive, or poisonous), as well as including standard risk phrases and safety procedures. Product information sheets must also be supplied in accordance with the Health and Safety at Work Act, detailing a large range of product data and safe handling precautions. 

This legislation came into force in 1990 and replaced earlier regulations such as the Electricity (Factories Act) Special Regulations 1944. Tlie regulations are made under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, and enforced by the Health and Safety Executive. The purpose of the regulations is to require precautions to be taken against the risk of death or personal injury from electricity in work activities . 

So risk assessment must form a part of any employer s robust policy of health and safety. However, an employer only needs to formally assess the significant risks. He or she is not expected to assess the trivial and minor types of household risks. Staff are expected to read and to act upon these formal risk assessments, and they are unlikely to do so enthusiastically if the file is full of trivia. An assessment of risk is nothing more than a careful examination of what, in your work, could cause harm to people. It is a record that shows whether sufficient precautions have been taken to prevent harm. 

Although BOEM s jurisdiction starts beyond state waters (on the OCS), an effective SMS should cover all activities and operations for all project phases and for all facilities, even if those activities occur outside of BOEM s jurisdiction. A lessee s policies and procedures documenting worker health and safety for offshore wind farms do not begin 3 nautical miles offshore, and neither should the lessee s SMS. The SMS exists to define an organization s health and safety policies and the responsibilities of key personnel, to identify hazards that can lead to incidents for all phases of a project, to determine the risk associated with each hazard, and to identify appropriate precautions to decrease the likelihood of incidents and mitigate any that occur. An SMS provides the foundation... 

Health risk assessment is the process of examining and evaluating the risk to the health and safety of workers while at work arising from the circumstances of the occurrence of a hazard at the workplace [1]. A risk assessment is a careful examination of what, at the workplace, could cause harm to people, so that the employer can decide whether he has taken enough precautions or should do more to prevent harm. Workers and others have a right to be protected from harm caused by a failure to take reasonable control measures. Accidents and ill health can ruin lives and affect the business too if for example output is lost, machinery is damaged, insurance costs increase or the employer even have to go to court. 

One final noteworthy point relates to health and safety. Appropriate risk mitigation should always be in place before any type of miUing and powder handling is carried out, with personal protective equipment and properly extracted work areas being imperative - such precautions are particularly important in the case of jet-milling and for jet-milled powders, where the size distribution contains a significant quantity of fines. 

The main health risks to workers exposed to isocyanates include asthma and rhinitis. The chemicals are also irritants, and splashes in the eyes may cause chemical conjunctivitis, while contact on the skin can lead to dermatitis. Practical and authoritative advice on precautions which employers and managers need to take to prevent or control exposure to isocyanates - a legal requirement in many countries (in the UK. under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 1999) - is set out in a Guidance Note from the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE). 

The employer must draw up an Explosion Protection Document to demonstrate that the risks have been assessed and to explain the precautions to be taken to control the risks. He must also coordinate the implementation of health and safety measures with other employers. 

All workers and management should appreciate the risks in the workplace, and these risks should be clearly identified in the Statement of Health and Safety Policy required under HSWA, together with the precautions required to be taken by workers to protect themselves from such risks. 

The second sense of risk assessment is based on the employer s requirement under many sections of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 to take reasonably practicable precautions in various areas to safeguard employees and other parties. This requires the making of a balanced judgement about the extent of a particular risk and its consequences against the time, trouble and cost of the steps needed to remove or reduce it. If the cost is grossly disproportionate , as a judge once put it, we are able to say that the steps are not reasonably practicable. Thus, in a very real sense, risk assessments have been carried out at least since 1974 in the UK. 

Users and supervisors of work equipment must have available to them adequate health and safety information and, where appropriate, specific written instructions pertaining to the use of the equipment (Regulation 8). User and supervisor training, including work methods, risks and precautions, are covered in Regulation 9. Some specific training which is referred to in the Approved Code of Practice includes young persons, and operators of self-propelled work equipment and chainsaws. 

Adhesives are a blend of different chemicals and therefore potentially hazardous to the environment and the user. The information about the risk can be found on the labels and the material safety data sheets. According to their risk and health ranking precautions have to be taken to create a safe working environment. Health and safety aspects are further developed in Chap. 39. 

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