Working With Chemical Hazards

If you work with hazardous chemicals, be aware that every hazardous chemical substance handled, whether it is a liquid, solid, vapor, or dust, could cause you harm if you do not understand the hazards and are not properly protected. 

Before working with hazardous chemicals at your job  

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This handbook will help you learn about the Standard, and how you can learn to be safe when working with chemical hazards in the workplace. 

The Hazard Communication Standard The Globally Harmonized System Hazardous Chemical Classification Safety Data Sheets How to Read a Safety Data Sheet How to Read a Container Label Employee Information Training Working with Chemical Hazards... 

All employees, working with highly hazardous chemicals must understand the safety and health hazards (29CFR1910.1200 - the Hazard Communication Standard) by knowing the properties of the chemicals with which they work, safe operating procedures, work practices, and emergency action. 

This serves as a reference for Uiose working with chemicals to check and see if the chemicals being used are hazardous. 

Fume hoods must be used when working with chemicals that may produce hazardous fumes. 

The key to safe handling of chemicals is a good, properly installed hood, and the referenced book devotes many pages to hoods and ventilation. It recommends that in a laboratory where people spend much of their time working with chemicals there should be a hood for each two people, and each should have at least 2.5 linear feet (0.75 meter) of working space at it. Hoods are more than just devices to keep undesirable vapors from the laboratory atmosphere. When closed they provide a protective barrier between chemists and chemical operations, and they are a good containment device for spills. Portable shields can be a useful supplement to hoods, or can be an alternative for hazards of limited severity, e.g., for small-scale operations with oxidizing or explosive chemicals. 

Human activities are associated with the use and disposal of a variety of chemicals and chemical products. This is the situation for a householder, a laboratory student, and also the industry worker. Many materials have properties that make them hazardous. They can create physical (fire, explosion) or health hazards (toxicity, chemical bums). However, there are many ways to work with chemicals which can both reduce the probability of an accident and reduce the consequences should an accident occur. Risk minimization depends on safe practices, appropriate engineering controls for chemical containment, the proper use of personnel protective equipment, use of the least amount of material necessary, and substitution of a less-hazardous chemical for a more hazardous one. Before beginning any chemical processing or operation, ask What would happen if. .. The answer to this question requires understanding of the hazards associated with chemicals, the equipment, and the procedure involved. The hazardous properties of the material and its intended use will dictate the precautions to be taken. 

Throughout history, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries have gained mind-boggling unexpected experience in the hazards of working with chemicals. The safety literature provides a sobering and dark commentary with regard to explosions, runaway reactions, fires, toxic emissions, asphyxiations, spills, and so on, and their consequences. Consequences are seen in the injuries and deaths of people and in physical, social, and environmental damage around the world. 

The welfare of the people who work with chemical products and processes is at least as important as the welfare of the environment. Green chemistry is anthropocentric (as is sustainable development). Several green chemistry principles reflect this anthropocentrism. Principles 3 (less-hazardous chemical synthesis), 4 (design of safer chemicals), 5 (safer solvents and auxiliaries), and 12 (inherently safer chemistry for accident prevention) express concern for the health of the people who handle materials or attend to processes (Anastas and Warner, 1998). While many of these safety benefits also accrue to nonhuman organisms, the focus of the principles is on the people who are exposed to these materials and methods. Inasmuch as we cannot know all of the environmental needs of nonhuman things, it is hard to imagine how the focus could be on anything else. 

Two types of hazards are associated with the use of chemicals—hazards that are a direct result of the physical and reactive properties of a chemical, and health hazards resulting from the biological properties. This chapter summarises hazards that are associated with working with chemicals in a laboratory, and highlights some sources of hazard information for carrying out hazard and risk assessments. 

Chemistry has always been a dangerous science. Early chemistry was a hazardous occupation. Men and women worked with chemicals about which they knew very litde. The discovery of new compounds and elements could easily have tragic consequences. 

Human health biomonitoring using biomarkers and chemical analyses are used in the following applications (1) Health surveillance of persons who are known to have high occupational or environmental exposures to potentially toxic chemicals. This may include those who work with chemicals, radioactive materials, or biohazards as part of their occupation. Examples include factory workers, chemical industry employees, farmers, health care professionals, nuclear plant employees, and veterans of the Gulf War I. This may also consist of those who are involuntarily exposed to such hazards in their everyday surroundings. Some examples are people living near land fills, factories, hazardous waste sites, or environmental catastrophes such as the Chernobyl... 

The "Right to Know Law" covers science teachers who work with potentially hazardous chemicals. Briefly, the law states that employees must be informed of potentially toxic chemicals. An inventory must be made available if requested. 

At sectoral level the Dutch approach to chemical hazards is distinguished by the particular prominence of the debate on substitution and the strategies to achieve this in certain sectors, as well as by the recent emphasis on the use of convenanten (covenants) to set agreed sector specific targets for improvement of the work environment - which in some cases, include agreement to improve on OEls. At worlq)lace level several features have a bearing on the approach to dealing with chemical hazards. They include ... 

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