Workplace hazardous substances

Selecting correct dangerous goods classification for a workplace hazardous substance... 

Designing appropriate labels for workplace hazardous substances... 

Is there potential that the product may result m the environmental or non-workplace release of a highly hazardous substance or an environmentally difficult material If yes did the toller receive a life cycle evaluation (for example, disposal of products, handling returns and rejects) Does the Toller understand the information Was written acknowledgment obtained indicating that the information was received ... 

Introducing COSHH. A bnef guide for all employers to the new requirements for controlling hazardous substances m the workplace introduced m the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 1988 (COSHH)... 

MSDS Material Safety Data Sheet - a document that provides pertinent information and a profile of a particular hazardous substance or mixture. An MSDS is normally developed by the manufacturer or formulator of the hazardous substance or mixture. The MSDS is required to be made available to employees and operators whenever there is the likelihood of the hazardous substance or mixture being introduced into the workplace. Some manufacturers prepare MSDS for products that are not considered to be hazardous to show that the product or substance is not hazardous. 

Wliat we have included is only a small part of a much longer document available in its entirety at the address shown or on the Web. We provide the complete table of contents so that you get a good idea of the subjects covered and the amount of detail taken to cover them. After the table of contents, we have taken several sections applying to working with hazardous substances. We believe that OSHA has chosen these items to ensure a safe and healthful workplace. COSHOs will use this format when performing an OSHA compliance audit on incinerator sites. 

EPA has established that hydrogen sulfide is a regulated toxic substance and is a hazardous substance as defined under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. OSH A has established an acceptable ceiling concentration of 20 parts per million (ppm) for hydrogen sulfide in the workplace, with a maximum level of 50 ppm allowed for 10 minutes maximum duration if no other measurable exposure occurs. NIOSH has set a maximum Recommended Exposure Limit (REL) ceiling value (10 minutes) of 10 ppm. A complete listing of federal and state regulations and recommendations are found in Chapter 7. 

One of the best ways to determine that potential is to examine the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS), which by law in most jurisdictions must be provided by the manufacturer for any hazardous material used in the workplace and made available to the employees by plant management. The MSDS provides all the information necessary to determine the hazard potential and the requirements for control of any hazardous substance. Still other information can be found in the various guidelines published by the American Industrial Health Association, or by the U.S. National Safety Council, or by NIOSH (the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) or various other national, state, or provincial government bodies. (See Appendix II for information on sources.) Once you have an inventory, of course, you can start relating potential health problems to possible sources in particular areas. Also, in the process of preparing this report, you will begin to build an invaluable library that will stand you in good stead for further consideration of the problems at hand. 

The goal of OSHA is to ensure that no employee will suffer material impairment of health or functional capacity, due to a lifetime occupational exposure to chemicals and hazardous substances. The statute imposes a duty on employers to provide employees with a safe workplace environment, free of known hazards that may cause death or serious bodily injury. 

The compounds profiled in this book include solvents, herbicides, insecticides, fumigants, and other hazardous substances most coimnoidy found in the groundwater and soil environment the organic Priority Pollutants promulgated by the U.S. Enviromnental Protection Agency (U S. EPA) under the Clean Water Act of 1977 [40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 136, 1977] and compounds most commonly found in the workplace. 

These general objectives should form an extensive consensus. There is likewise a general consensus that environmental, occupational, health and consumer policies over the past thirty years have achieved considerable material success in reducing the use of known hazardous substances, also with regard to their loads in soil, air, water and products and not least of all with regard to their safe handling at the workplace. 

The concern over the workplace hazards of chemical substances has increased with the determination that some compounds are carcinogens or suspect carcinogens. Consequently, it has been recommended by NIOSH that several established standards be lowered (3). It is, therefore, very important to develop methods that can be readily adapted to lower standard levels without the need for additional costly and time-consuming research. 

Hazardous substances requires the labeling of containers of toxic substances in the workplace... 

For work areas (rooms inside buildings in which workplaces have been permanently installed) the requirements relating to workplaces as specified in the Workplaces Ordinance must be observed. Basically rooms in workplaces (such as office rooms, for example) are deemed to be indoor environments in the aforementioned sense when the air pollutants found there are not used as working materials or when a working material from an area subject to hazardous substances legislation crosses into these rooms (Welzbacher, 1999). 

This chapter discusses CSDP monitoring of employee health status as it relates to the workplace. A responsible industrial operation involving hazardous substances must have an effective occupational and environmental health program to monitor workers for health effects that might result from unknown exposures to chemical or physical agents during normal operations or from accidental exposures during upset conditions. 

The chemical profession and the federal government have attempted to minimize worker exposure to compounds or reactions that result in an acute or chronic biological response. The American Chemical Society has sponsored several symposia during the past few years in which chemists have discussed potentially hazardous compounds. However, to assess the extent of hazardous exposure in the workplace, new demands have been made on analytical chemistry. The analytical chemist has responded by producing and developing new methodologies and instrumentation that permit the detection and monitoring of extremely low level concentrations of hazardous substances. 

Generally, environmental regulations require that an employer have all MSDSs for any workplace product that contains hazardous substances, and these must be made available to employees on request. MSDSs can also be obtained from the manufacturer of the material, and many are available over the Internet. 

In the UK the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) Regulations 2002 oblige laboratory managers and supervisors (and employers in general) to assess the risks to health from hazardous substances used in or created by workplace activities. 

Acting under the authority of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (Public Law 91-596), the NIOSH develops and periodically revises recommended exposure limits (RELs) for hazardous substances or conditions in the workplace. These recommendations are then published and transmitted to OSHA for use in promulgating legal standards. NIOSH may identify numerous chemicals that it believes should be treated as occupational carcinogens even though OSHA has not yet identified them as such. Generally, where OSHA has adopted the NIOSH recommendations as OSHA standards, the OSHA PELs and NIOSH RELs are equal. In cases in which the NIOSH recommendations have not been formally adopted by OSHA, the NIOSH RELs may be different from the OSHA PELs. For example, the NIOSH exposure limit for trichloroethylene (25 ppm) differs from the OSHA exposure limit (50 ppm). 

The OSHA sets safe and healthy workplace standards. When OSHA was formed, they adopted the then current ACGIH TLV - TWAs and TLV-Cs as occupational exposure limits and made them federal standards. However, instead of calling them TLV -TWAs, OSHA called them PELs. OSHA has both TWA and ceiling values for various chemicals. PELs are listed in Title 29 of the Code of Eederal Regulations (CER), Part 1910, Subpart Z, General Industry Standards for Toxic and Hazardous Substances. Emergency responders should understand that ACGIH and OSHA values are not always the same for each chemical. 

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