Total Environmental Health and Safety Management

Total Environmental Health and Safety Management

Chapter 11: A Primer on Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment: Sections 4.2 and 5.1.1 of Z10

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Chapter 12: Provisions for Risk Assessments in Standards and Guidelines: Sections 4.2 and 5.1.1 of Z10

Lesson

The stated purpose of ANSI/AIHA Z10 is to give management a tool that can help reduce the risks of injuries or deaths (Manuele, 2014). We need, however, to know what risk is and how it can be reduced. Any discussion of risk must start with an explanation and discussion of hazards. Most safety practitioners would agree that a hazard is a condition, action, or inaction that can cause injury. Here is a specific example: a table saw blade can cause injury, so it is a hazard. Using a rolling chair as a ladder can result in injury, so it is a hazard. Asbestos causes illness, so it is a hazard. Falling from a 30-foot-high platform can result in death, so it is a hazard. It seems simple. Eliminate all hazards, and there will not be any problems.

Unfortunately, hazards are very complex, and removing them is not always possible or, in some cases, even a good idea. For example, the main hazards of a table saw blade include cutting off the fingers and limbs of the operator. Another hazard is a kickback hazard, which can occur when ripping wood. Ripping entails cutting wood longitudinally, in the same direction as the grain, usually to make the board being cut narrower as opposed to a cross cut. When ripping, the wood can bind by essentially pinching in on the blade as it spins, resulting in the board being thrown towards the operator at a fairly high velocity. Thus, the operator is exposed to both getting hit by the flying board and losing control of his hands. Keep in mind that the operator’s hands were originally placing pressure upon the board toward the direction of the blade.

Kick-back hazards are controlled with a spreader and anti-kickback device also known as an anti-kickback dog. The spreader helps to keep the board that is being cut from pinching in on the blade, and the anti1

kickback dogs prevent the board from being thrown by the spinning blade. However, even when these UNIT x STUDY GUIDE

devices are in place, there is always a possibility of an injury occurring because of a simple mistake or failure Title of the machine guarding devices.

Of course, removing the blade or cutting the power cord to the saw certainly eliminates the inherent hazards, but it does not help much when we need to cross-cut or rip a piece of lumber. Thus, it is often necessary to take risks to get the job done. In addition, the amount of risk incurred can vary. Consider all the driving conditions you have had to face in the past to get to work, for instance. Some days, driving conditions are optimal. Other days, the roads may be slick, the rain so heavy you can hardly see the road, or the sun may be in your eyes for part of the trip. Despite these hazards, you still have to get to work. If we were not willing to take on some additional risk, we would likely not have jobs due to excessive absences.

Hazards that are identified in the workplace need to be considered and analyzed before they can be controlled, and not all hazards are obvious. Consider the table saw discussion above. A shipping supervisor purchasing a table saw at a big box store to cross-cut boards for stacking metal I-beams may know nothing about this hazard or underestimate the potential outcomes. On the other hand, the supervisor may know about the hazard but not plan to do any ripping and not consider the occasional situation where a shipping employee who is a wood-working novice decides to make a board narrower to fix a broken pallet.

How serious is the undesired outcome of the hazard? What is the chance that this outcome will actually happen? In asking these questions about a hazard, we are assessing the level of risk inherent in performing the operation. Risk is an expression of the consequences of exposure to a hazard against the likelihood of that exposure actually happening.

Most would agree about the consequences of contact with a spinning, unguarded table saw blade or the possibility of a kick- back. What we might not agree on is the likelihood of that contact happening to an experienced operator; however, we could probably agree that the risk is high that an incident might occur. Adding a guard and anti-kickback to the table saw would reduce the risk, although there are both monetary and production costs to this decision. Organizations cannot spend all their money on safety and still remain in business, so there needs to be a system to prioritize efforts to reduce risks caused by hazards.

Hazard Analysis

Some hazards are easy to spot; others may be hidden. How do we ensure that we have identified all hazards? A good starting point is the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA). Many of the more common industrial hazards are regulated in the OSHA standards, and there are many checklists available to help sort through them. Remember, however, that many other OSHA standards represent minimum, compliance-focused requirements, and not all workplace hazards are addressed by the OSHA standards. There are also a number of standards that do require that some sort of hazard analysis be conducted. One such standard is OSHA’s standard on personal protective equipment. Other standards requiring one type of assessment or another include OSHA’s blood-borne pathogens and hazard communication standards.

OSHA’s process safety management standard even goes a step further and requires employers that maintain large quantities of highly hazardous chemicals to conduct high-level process hazard analyses of their processes. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a very similar standard and requires employers to go a step further by modeling potential community exposures to large chemical releases. It also requires employers to develop a risk management plan based on the outcome of the modeling.

Some of the hazard analysis techniques specified in the process safety management standard are presented in the readings for this unit. Manuele (2014) for instance, suggests techniques such as preliminary hazard analysis, what-If analysis, checklist analysis, failure modes and effects analysis, hazard and operability analysis, and others. These tools are well adapted for analyzing process hazards, and it is good to become familiar with these hazard analysis tools.

What is interesting to note regarding OSHA’s and EPA’s standards is that we can see some of the overlap between hazard analysis and risk management in that identification of the hazards is the first step of the process, followed by consideration of what to do to minimize the risk. In considering the management of risks, once all hazards are identified, each one needs to be analyzed to determine the severity of the consequences of exposure to the hazard, as well as the likelihood of exposure. As noted earlier, this combination of severity and probability is what we refer to as risk. To quantify risk, we can use a matrix that combines the two UNIT x STUDY GUIDE parameters into risk levels, typically labeled high, serious, medium, and low. This identifies the risks that are Title unacceptable and must be reduced immediately as well as risks that are acceptable enough that we can  postpone action until a later date or take no action at all.

Determination of severity and probability are critical steps. Without considering the severity and likelihood of occurrence, we may end up spending resources on controlling hazards that present little risk or leaving serious hazards uncontrolled. Using risk management techniques can be useful for helping managers prioritize the distribution of resources to identify and address the most serious hazards first. Certainly, this makes sense. If a hazard with potentially catastrophic outcomes is identified, and the hazard has high probability of occurrence, it makes sense to dedicate resources to attending to this hazard in the short term. This would be particularly true as compared to another issue that would be equally costly to abate and would rarely occur and result in only very minor injuries.

This may sound like common sense; however, hazards are sometimes not as obvious as one would imagine, despite the probability and severity of the occurrence. Given a process safety scenario at a chemical manufacturer’s facility, for instance, a single process, storage vessel, valve, or opportunity for human error can be overlooked resulting in a serious incident. This is why OSHA requires in-depth hazard analyses when it comes to handling large quantities of hazardous materials. A meticulous review of anything that can go wrong and its consequences needs to be conducted to avoid catastrophic consequences.

Hazard analysis and risk management obviously go hand in hand when it comes to managing safety and health in the workplace. It is important to both identify hazards and appreciate the risk of an incident occurring. It is also important to identify the severity of an incident outcome and the probability of the incident occurring if an organization is to identify and focus resources on abatement of more serious hazards first. OSHA’s process safety management standard and the EPA’s risk management standard reflect the importance and overlap of hazard analysis and risk management. Again, the two concepts are closely related even though they can be conceptually discussed as different processes or tools available to the safety professional to assist in the decision making process.

Reference                          UNIT x STUDY GUIDE

Title
Manuele, F. A. (2014). Advanced safety management: Focusing on Z10 and serious inju ry prevention (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Suggested Reading

The additional chapter from the textbook and resources below can provide further reading and tools on risk:

Chapter 13: Three- and Four-Dimensional Risk Scoring Systems: Sections 5.1.1 and 5.1.2 of Z10

In order to access the following resources, click the links below.

European Agency for Safety and Health at Work. (n.d.). Risk assessment essentials. Retrieved from https://osha.europa.eu/en/publications/promotional_material/rat2007

Health & Safety Executive. (2014). Controlling the risks in the workplace. Retrieved from http://www.hse.gov.uk/risk/controlling-risks.htm