Hazard Identification Process: ABC Chemicals - Case Study Example

Hazard Identification Process: A Case of ABC Chemicals by Course: Tutor: University: Department: Deadline Introduction This paper seeks to analyse the case of ABC Chemicals in the context of hazard identification process. According to the case study, ABC Chemicals distributes solvents, acids, detergents, and other corrosives. Specifically, the paper intends to identify legislations that apply to a company that handles hazardous chemicals. This will capture employees, the elderly in the local nursing home, children in the childcare centre, and others who live within the vicinity of ABC Chemicals. After identification of legislations that are applicable to ABC Chemicals, the essay will discuss whether the company complies with the legislations. Secondly, hazards will be identified. Thirdly, risk assessment and identification process will be discussed. The level of each risk as well as risk control methods will be given necessary attention. Applicable legislations and compliance The new work health and safety laws and legislations, which took effect from 1 January 2011, to replaced OHS. The act outlines legal obligations that must be followed in order to ensure health and safety of workers (New South Wales, 2014). The WHS Act places the responsibility of ensuring health and safety on a person running the business. According to Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011, the duty holder must be able to note reasonably foreseeable hazards that may lead to health and safety risks. In this scenario, ABC Chemical is tasked with the duty, by law, to be certain that health and safety of workers and other individuals are not at risk from the business run by the company. The duties revolve around safe use, handling, and storage of such hazardous mixtures. Some of the duties vested upon ABC Chemicals particularly with respect to chemical business include correct labelling of containers, keeping a register, identifying physical and chemically reactive hazards and ensuring their stability, training workers, and updating safety data sheet (Sherriff and Tooma, 2010). Besides, ABC Chemical must have a spill containment system as opposed to using rags to clean spillages. The law further requires ABC Chemicals to have an emergency plan. Currently, ABC have not only failed to train its workers on safe handling of chemicals and emergencies but also missed to install a well-displayed emergency plan in the workplace. Generally, ABC Chemicals have grossly violated legislations required of a company that deals in hazardous chemicals. Hazards Grammeno (2009) defines a hazard as a source or a situation that can cause harm through injury, ill health, damage to property and environment. According to WHS legislations, hazardous chemicals comprise of mixtures that meet the criteria outlined by Globally Harmonized System as well as those classified under Schedule 6 of WHS regulations (Safe Work Australia, 2014). The legislations stipulate that a hazardous chemical is a mixture that has adverse impact on the ecosystem. In brief, they cause injury or illness to a person. Under the two classifications of health hazards, it is rather clear that ABC Chemicals handle materials that pose as health hazard as well as physicochemical hazard. Considering the category of a health hazard, it is apparent from the case study that chemicals distributed by ABC Chemicals are acids and corrosives. This means that they have chemical properties that are adverse to the body if are in contact with the skin. Concisely, chemicals being distributed by ABC Chemicals can corrode the skin hence its classification as a health hazard. Secondly, the chemicals being manned by ABC Chemicals may also be classified as physicochemical hazards. The rationale behind this conclusion is that they can cause injury and damage to property if mishandled. Acids and corrosives are chemically reactive hence can even cause explosion and fires if they are not handled appropriately. Solvents and detergents as well must be handled well with other chemicals to avoid causing harm. According to the case under investigation, the 50 employees decant chemicals into smaller containers. Notwithstanding the fact that the chemicals are reactive, employees do not handle well spillages. Spills are just cleaned with rags, which are later disposed along with other wastes. This is clear demonstration of the failure to handle the reactive chemicals in an appropriate manner hence presenting as physicochemical hazard (Sherriff and Tooma, 2010). Apparently, workers have not received sufficient training on handling chemicals and dealing with emergencies, a violation of WHS regulations. Assessment and identification of relevant risks Grammeno (2009, p. 12) defines risk as the interplay between the likelihood of occurrence and consequence of a particular hazardous event. In the same line, risk assessment is the entire process of estimating amount of risk and making decision on the appropriate path to take. Under the WHS regulations, assessment of risk is indispensible especially when it comes to hazardous chemicals. The essence of risk assessment is to identify exposure, sources of risk, appropriate control measures, and examining the effectiveness of the existing control measures. The process of risk assessment in ABC Chemicals would start with identifying a supervisor who is competent to assess risk. The supervisor will need the assistance of workers, their health and safety representative as well as experts in the area of chemicals. If ABC Chemicals do not have competent personnel to conduct the assessment, there is need to source external expertise. The type of assessment that will be conducted on the company is a detailed assessment. A detailed assessment is appropriate for ABC Chemicals because of significant risk to health that is apparent in the company. This will capture review of labelling, Safety Data Sheet of hazardous materials, and examining the risks that are involved. The assessor would make decisions concerning elimination of risks, choosing control measures, and ensure that control measures are being used and maintained appropriately. Given that acids and corrosives that are being decanted by ABC workers presents health risks, the assessor needs to understand situations where people can be exposed or make contact with the chemicals. Besides considering workers who are directly involved in handling hazardous chemicals, it is vital to be conscious of a local nursing home located within 25 meters of ABC Chemicals and the childcare centre situated within the vicinity. With the knowledge that acids, corrosives, detergents, and solvents fall under physicochemical risk besides the aforementioned health risk, they have the ability to cause explosion and fire when it is exposed to other materials including source of ignition. Fires and explosion can cause serious injury as well as damage to infrastructure. Acids and corrosives are chemical oxidizers therefore can react violently with organic chemicals such as hydrocarbons solvents, and other organic chemicals. Such violent reaction can cause chemical burns and huge fires. It is, therefore, the duty of an assessor to scrutinize whether acids are in compatible containers and with the required equipment to avoid reactions. Level of each risk The level of each individual risk is often determined using Safety Data Sheet commonly referred to as SDS. The document has the identity of a product and any hazardous material, health effect, safe handling, and disposal requirement. If SDS is not available, the manufacturer must be contacted. After considering the SDS, risks are then classified according the consequence and likelihood of the risk (University of Western Australia, 2004). This is displayed in the table below. Table: risk rating Risk Consequence Likelihood Violent chemical reaction catastrophic Very likely to happen Skin corrosion Major Very likely Spillage Significant Certain to happen Contamination Major Very likely Pollution Insignificant Very low Mosquito breeding ground Major Very likely According to the table above, it is very likely that chemical reaction will occur in ABC Chemicals. Such reaction will be catastrophic and cause death or permanent disability. Secondly, skin corrosion is very likely to occur because no worker has received any training in safe handling of chemicals. It is also noticeable in ABC Chemicals that spillages are just wiped with rags. Thirdly, the risk of spillage is certain to happen since the company does not use engineering techniques to stop spillages. Such spillages have significant impact since the rags used to wipe the chemicals are disposed in a general dumper along with other items that can cause reaction. The fourth risk of contamination has been rated as major and very likely to happen because of the nature of waste disposal carried out by the company. ABC Chemicals is reckless in disposing its waste, which might overflow to the neighbouring paddocks owned by local council. Finally, pollution is less given that chemical distribution done by the company does not give rise to emissions. Nursing care for the elderly as well as baby care centre will be affected to a very small extent. This is why it has been classified as insignificant and very low, unless there are fumes emanating from the activity. Lastly, the risk of malaria infection due to availability of breeding ground for mosquitoes is major and very likely to happen. Childcare centre must be protected from the possibility of mosquitoes. It is, however, evident in the case that ABC Chemical stores 250 empty drums in the rear yard adjacent to a large open overgrown paddock with grass. These are breading grounds for mosquitoes. Risk control methods Risks can be controlled in a number of ways including substitution, isolation, and implementing engineering controls (University of Western Australia, 2004). Depending on the remaining risk, the approaches can be supported using administrative controls as well as personal protective equipment. ABC Chemicals can eliminate the hazard by using equipment to substitute direct human contact. Secondly, isolation is most appropriate in the case of ABC Chemicals. This means that workers are separated from chemicals by restricting entry to an isolated operation. Only workers who are properly protected will be allowed to enter. Secondly, incompatible chemicals should be kept separate from each other using barriers and wide distance. Acids are oxidizers and classified as physicochemical risks. They react violently with other substance to cause extensive damage to property and life. In order to decide on isolation as a control technique, one must understand quantity of hazardous chemicals, installation involved, existing control measures, and activities that might increase risk. The third control measure that is applicable in ABC Chemicals is engineering controls. Spillages mentioned in the case are wiped using rags that are subsequently disposed into a general waste dumpster located at the rear side of the building. By installing mechanical devices, spillages will be minimized. At the same time, any spillage is well contained without the necessity to use rags. As a move towards providing additional protection, administrative controls should be applied by ABC Chemicals. The observation that workers are using rags to wipe spillages can be contained easily using administrative controls. Spillage of acids, corrosives, and detergents must be handled professionally. Continuous training and supervision is necessary for corrosive substances. The forth control measure is the personal protective equipment. Generally, this is applied as a last resort when other control measures have been applied but failed to reduce risk. However, protective gear is indispensible in the ABC’s case of corrosives, acids, and detergents. Conclusion According this paper, ABC Chemicals distributes hazardous chemicals including solvents, acids, detergents, and other corrosives. The risks presented by these chemicals are skin corrosion, violent chemical reaction, spillages, contamination, and pollution. The environment being managed by ABC Chemicals is also a favourable breeding ground for mosquitos because of empty chemical drums. The drums ought to be kept in a well-controlled warehouse otherwise, it poses as a risk to the surrounding community including childcare and nursing care centre. The paper identified legislations that apply to ABC Chemicals i.e. distributing hazardous chemicals. Exposure to risk of the employees, the elderly in the local nursing home, children in the childcare centre, and others who live within the vicinity of ABC Chemicals was discussed extensively. The essay went ahead to demonstrate how ABC Chemicals extensively violates WHS legislations. Finally, the paper assessed and identified risk, ranked them and outlined control mechanisms. Reference List Grammeno, G. (Ed) 2009, Planning occupational health, & safety: a guide to OHS risk management, CCH Australia Limited, North Ryde. New South Wales 2014, Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, viewed 26 July 2014, . Safe Work Australia 2011, How to Manage Work Health and Safety Risks Code of Practice, viewed 26 July 2014, . Safe Work Australia 2014, Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS), viewed 26 July 2014, . Sherriff, B & Tooma, M 2010, Understanding the Model Work Health and Safety Act, CCH Australia Limited, North Ryde. University of Western Australia 2004, Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment, and Control Procedure, viewed 26 July 2014, . Read More