Posts Tagged ‘Hazard’

Oxygen enriched environment

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

Oxygen is necessary for human beings to breathe, but it pose a hazard if it is in excess of its usual component in the environment (21%). Oxygen is not easily detected by our senses and when there are leaks in oxygen hoses in an environment, especially a confined space, the space can become oxygen enriched easily. Once an environment is oxygen enriched, any open fire or spark can cause a violent fire to occur. The fire burns intensely and hair and clothing burn easily causing severe burn injury.

 Click here for an information sheet on oxygen enriched environment.

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Posted in Confined space, Fire and explosion | No Comments »

Health hazards of woodworking

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Click here for the health hazards of woodworking. In case you are unaware, wood dust is a carcinogen!

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Posted in Occ. Health | No Comments »

Kitchen Hazards

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Kitchens are known to have high density of hazards. Due to the high density employees working in kitchens are frequently exposed to hazards on a day-to-day basis. This increases the likelihood of an accident.

O’Mahony’s (2005) book “Professional Kitchen Safety” (ISBN 1 86250 515 2), categorised a kitchen’s activities into:

  • Receiving goods
  • Storing and retrieving goods
  • Preparation and processing
  • Operating kitchen appliances and equipment
  • The service phase
  • The post-service phase

Within each phase he highlighted some of the common hazards and control measures. The book also discussed about fire, first-aid, environmental issues and stress on kitchen workers. This is a concise (only 80 pages) and very practical book with pictures and short case studies. Not exactly very indepth as it is definitely meant for busy practitioners.

Based on O’Mahony’s book the main hazards in a typical commercial kitchen are as follows:

  • Fire
  • Slip & trip
  • Sharp objects (knives)
  • Heat (steam, hot food/oil/water)
  • Sharp and/or moving parts of machinery (mixer, slicer)
  • Electrical hazards
  • Stress
  • Poor lighting
  • Hot and humid environment
  • Manual handling
  • Chemicals (e.g. solvents used for cleaning)
  • Repetitive motion (resulting in occupational overuse syndrome)

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Posted in Food & Beverage | No Comments »

What is a hazard?

Sunday, February 17th, 2008

There are a lot of confusion as to what is a hazard. The usual definition is that a hazard is any thing (object, situation or activity) that has the potential to cause harm (injury or loss). A lot of practitioners wrongly use terms like falling from height, and stuck by object to represent hazards, but these terms actually describes a possible accident sequence or scenario. They are not hazards.

 When we do risk assessment, the terms used should have relevance from the point of view of an accident. When we describe accidents, one of the terms used is “agency of accident” (The Agency of Accident classification is intended to identify the object, substance, or circumstance that was principally involved in, or most closely associated with, the point at which things started to go wrong and which ultimately led to the most serious injury or disease.) To me hazards should be refering to a potential agency of accident, e.g. open edge, used needles, solvent paint and excessive noise from machine.

 In risk assessment, both possible accident sequences and hazards should be identified for clarity.

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Posted in OSH Management, OSH Resources | No Comments »

Websites with photos of hazards

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

Here’s a list of websites that has good photos on hazards (got it from a contact of mine):

Note possible copyright implications.

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Posted in OSH Resources | No Comments »