Ihab Saad – Hazcom Hazard Communication
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the potential hazards and modes of communication regarding chemical hazards, including exposure to chemicals and dangerous factors like low energy and high toxicity. They suggest providing hazards communication and training employees to avoid hazards, including providing safety and environmental regulations. The speakers also discuss the four types of employers and the importance of providing hazards communication and safety training to employees. The presentation then covers topics related to the Department of Transportation, including virgin material, fire hazard, and energy management.
AI: Summary ©
Music. Welcome to a new safety class, and today we're going to
talk about Hazard Communication. What exactly are hazards and how
do they need to be communicated, and what are going to be the modes
or the tools for this communication?
The purpose of this subchapter or subpart is to make sure that the
hazards of chemicals are evaluated and that information concerning
their hazards is communicated to employers and employees so no one
would be exposed by mistake.
Here are some examples of major accidents that happened due to
chemicals and how they affected the surrounding environment in
1978 20,000 tons of 240
different chemicals stored at a dump in New York City were dumped
in a canal, which resulted in birth defects, miscarriages and
cancer that were reported since this canal was used for water, for
potable water, drinking water, 900 families were relocated. So you
can see that it has a major effect on the surrounding environment.
In another accident, 1983 a worker died on February 10, 1983 while
cleaning out a tank containing sodium cyanide, which is
poisonous. Three managers were prosecuted by Cook County State's
Attorney. Two received 18 month sentences for manslaughter.
Again in Chicago in 1983 several workers reported being sick from
vapors from wire coating extrusion process, OSHA determined that
there was an overexposure to phenol and xylene in 1989 in the
Illinois Supreme Court allows five executives to stand trial for
aggravated battery, for job related injuries to their
employees. So you can see there's a criminal charge for that.
So this standard, the has come or hazard communication standard, was
ordered by Congress several several states enacted their own
right to know law for anyone who's going to be dealing with a
chemical that's the determined to be hazardous. Chemical
manufacturers wanted one uniform law versus very various state
laws. Because again, if you're going to be working in a state and
you're not quite familiar with that law, you might
accidentally do a violation of that law. So it would better be if
it's just one law governing all states, one federal law.
So what makes a chemical hazardous? Why would it be
hazardous? In general, it's if it becomes a health hazard or a
physical hazard or a biological hazard. So these are the different
three different types of hazards that can make a chemical
hazardous.
When we talk about the chemical exposure, we talk about two
different issues, severity and duration. Some chemicals are going
to be not are not going to be that hazardous if the duration of
exposure is going to be very limited, whereas some of them are
going to be hazardous even with a very short exposure. So acute
effects usually occur rapidly as a result of short term exposures and
are of short duration, so acute, causing severe pain or severe
symptoms for a very short period of time due to very short term
exposure, whereas chronic, which is the more dangerous, effects
generally occur as a result of long term exposure and of long
duration. That's why they're called chronic
so one of the first types of hazards is corrosive hazard, and
it shows visible destruction or irreversible damage to body
tissue. We can cite, for example, acids as being corrosive
and caustics or bases, some of them are also very corrosive.
And then another type of hazard here is going to be toxicity,
toxic and highly toxic. It can cause death or serious injury from
a single exposure, if it's highly toxic
by ingestion, if that's going to be by swallowing that poisonous or
toxic material, by dermal contact over the skin, or mists or vapors.
Exposure to mist or vapor, as we have seen in that accident that
was cited at the very beginning,
highly toxic means that a small dose can cause severe effects, so
toxic and high toxic can cause all of these effects. But highly toxic
in a very small dose can cause these severe effects.
Toxic, larger dose, again, is going to cause severe effects,
an irritant.
It's not as hazardous as a toxic or corrosive, but still, it causes
a hazard. It's not a corrosive causes reversible inflammatory
effect, so it can cause inflammation to the eyes or
inflammation to the skin or to any other membrane. So but these are
reversible, they can be cured and reversed,
another major hazard is resulting from fire and explosion. So we're
going to talk about explosion and flammability scale. We have
something called L E, L, which is the lower explosive limit, and
Uel, which is the upper explosive limit. Now looking at a mixture
between a gas
or a mist or a vapor and the air. So in this case, is going to be
the fuel.
If it's 0% fuel, 100% air, of course there's nothing, not
nothing's going to happen if it's a lot of air and
or a lot of fuel and not too much air,
lot of fuel and not too much air. And by air here we mean primarily
oxygen, then it's going to be too lean to burn.
So it's not going to burn. If it does not have oxygen enough, it's
not going to burn. And beyond that, we're going to have the
lower explosive limit.
On the other hand, on the other extreme, if the mixture is too
rich, if it's 100% fuel with no air, no oxygen whatsoever, it's
not going to burn.
So in this case, it's going to be too rich to burn. So we have two
extremes, too lean to burn, or too rich to burn. Too lean, which is
lot, lot of oxygen, but not much fuel. Too rich, too much fuel, not
much oxygen. And that would be the upper explosive limit in between.
That's going to be the danger zone. That's going to be the
flammable range where we have enough mixture of oxygen and the
fuel and that can cause the burning, or can cause the
explosion in some cases.
So again, it's only combustible between the LEL lower explosive
limit and UEL upper explosive, explosive limit. But any
concentration of combustible gas should be a concern, because it
can start accumulating until it reaches the the lower exposure
explosive, explosive limit. Lean mixtures can collect in an area
and reach a combustible level. Or rich mixtures can be diluted with
air to become combustible, so we do not want any accumulation
whatsoever.
How are we going to communicate these hazards? They're going to be
communicated through several vehicles, including the Material
Safety Data Sheet, or MSDS. Remember that acronym, MSDs,
Material Safety Data Sheet. It can also we convey through labels on
the different containers, for example, through a written program
which explains in detail what are going to be the hazards of
exposure to this chemical. And we have to train the employees, so
that's another tool for hazard communication, by showing them
pictures, by showing them the actual product, and by training
them on how to protect themselves against exposure and what to do in
case of exposure,
the major points of HazCom or hazards communication is employees
must know the hazards of chemicals, such as toxicity and if
They are carcinogenic, which means causing cancer. Many employees use
dangerous chemicals without personal protective equipment, and
that would be a mistake. The contractor must have data sheets
of other employers chemicals if their own employees are exposed.
If you remember, at the very beginning of this
learning process about safety. We talked about
the different types of employers. We talked about creating or
causing. We talked about exposing, we talked about controlling. We
talked about all of these different four types of of of
employers. So the correcting is the fourth one. So in this case,
if you are a an exposing contractor, where you're not the
causing or creating, but you are an exposing contractor. Your
employees are going to be exposed to the hazards caused by another
contractor. You have to train your employees on recognizing these
hazards and how to deal with
them. Employees are required to provide information to their
employees about the hazardous chemicals to which they are
exposed using Hazard Communication program, labels and other forms of
warnings and Material Safety Data Sheets and information and
training. So these are basically going to be the tools for an
employer to communicate.
That chemical, they have to label that containers. And once these
containers are brought to the site, you have to make sure that
this label remains intact. And if it gets damaged, you have to
replace it with another label with the same information.
There are some exemptions for portable containers, the employer
is not required to label portable containers into which hazardous
chemicals are transferred from labeled containers and which are
intended only for the immediate use by the employee who performs
the transfer. Sometimes you might have a gas can, for example, when
you are if your car runs out of gas, and you have those red gas
cans. You don't find the label on this gas can. It's already known
by shape and by size and so on that this contains gas, so people
are going to pay attention. But in this case, you're not going to
store gas in that can for a long period of time. You're just going
to need it to refill your tank. So in this case, is immediate use by
the person who performs the transfer.
Now here we have a problem. Here we have some gas cans that have
been stored. Here we have a container that's not labeled,
that's not even covered, so no one knows exactly what's in that
container, and it doesn't seem to be for immediate use, so that
would be a violation.
Hazard Assessment is going to be done through one of three
different ways, D O T classes. D O T is the Department of
Transportation, not just dot, it's D O T Department of
Transportation, classes, NFPA, National Fire Protection Agency or
association 704, diamond, we're going to talk about that in more
detail. And HMIs, Hazard Management Information System
labeling. So we're going to look at all of these three different
systems.
The first one is with the D O, T classes, classes of hazardous
materials. You're gonna notice these, by the way, if you are
driving on a highway behind the truck that carries a hazardous
material, you're gonna find some labels on that truck that show
exactly what kind of chemical is it carrying, whether it's fuel,
whether it's another chemical, and so on and so forth. So the hazard
class of Dangerous Goods is indicated either by its class name
or division number. There are nine different classes.
So the first one is explosives. You're going to find that sign on
the truck showing that it's explosive and it's six divisions,
1.1 to 1.6
the second one is gasses. That's another one here. Three divisions,
2.1 to 2.3 and that's the symbol for it. It's a flammable gas. The
third one is Flammable and combustible liquids. So that's
even more dangerous, and now it carries number three. It has a
category on its own.
Class four is flammable solids, which has three divisions, 4.1 to
4.3 all under class four. Class five is oxidizers and organic
peroxides, which has two divisions, 5.1 and 5.2
number six is poisons. That's quite rare to see on the truck,
but again, it may exist there, and it has two divisions, 6.1 and 6.2
class seven, radioactive material. And that's a class on its own,
class seven, class eight, corrosives and class nine,
miscellaneous. It's still something that would not classify
under any of these eight classes, but it still has this material. So
in this case, it would be miscellaneous. So
the National Fire Protection Association known as NFPA 704,
diamond lists hazards of material when exposed to fire conditions.
So if they are exposed to fire, what's going to happen? Are they
going to emit fumes, or are they going to Expo explode? Are they
going to be inert, or they're going to remain intact? So we need
to know about that. And this is basically the NFPA diamond. You
can also see these on many trucks. So whether it's going to cause in
case of fire, how is it going to behave in case of what is the
health risk, any special hazard, and if it's going to be reactive,
reactivity,
so something like that, for example, it has 231, and w, which
means it's a fire hazard. Flash points is number two.
Is dangerous in such and such way, and if exposed, use the following
precautions, things like that.
For the employee information and training, employers must provide
employees with information and training on hazardous chemicals in
their work area at the time of their initial assignment, once
they get to the job, and whenever a new chemical or health hazard
the employees have not previously been trained about is introduced
into their work area. So each time a new hazard occurs or is about to
occur, you have to train your employees on how to identify it,
how to recognize it, and how to protect against it and how to
remedy it. In case of exposure,
training may cover categories of hazard, the different categories
that we talked about, including the classes, the DoD classes,
including the NFPA and the HMIs and so on.
Employers must inform employees of the location and availability of
the list of hazardous chemicals. Where would you find this
information? Usually in the Material Safety Data Sheets. And
the location and availability of Material Safety Data Sheets.
Employee Training shall include at least this is the minimum in a
training program for the employees methods and observations that may
be used to detect the presence or release of a hazardous chemical in
the work area, whether it's by color, whether it's by smell,
whether it's by any other symptom of exposure the physical and
health hazards of chemicals in the work area. So what's the effect of
that chemical? Measures employees can take to protect themselves,
and details of the employer's specific program. What is the
employer going to provide to protect against this export?
So this is our
presentation today about Hazard Communication. As you can see,
it's a very important topic, and many contractors get cited for not
having a clear training program, or not having up to date Material
Safety Data Sheets, or not having proper labeling on the containers
for the different chemicals and so on and so forth. I hope you stay
safe.