DID YOU WEAR HEARING PROTECTION
THE LAST TIME THAT YOU MOWED THE LAWN?

Tommy, can you hear me?

(“Tommy Can You Hear Me?” by The Who, 1971)

Before the 1990s, the process industries had a dismal health, safety and environmental record as evidenced by repeated processing faults that caused injuries and fatalities. Industry spokespersons would refer to these incidents as “regrettable learning experiences.”

Incident investigations would be performed under the scrutiny of the media and local or state government officials. A few years later, a very similar incident would occur somewhere else. There wasn’t much "preventative learning experience” going on.

 

Actual Industrial Health and Safety Practices
Prior to the mid 1990s:

• Your Mentor would participate in monthly “safety audits” by walking around the plant with the instruction to find 10 safety concerns. So maybe the fire extinguisher charge date would be exceeded. Maybe a steam hose was not coiled correctly. I would fill out the form and turn it in and be on to the next assignment of my day. From my point of view, my role in plant safety was done.

• Your Mentor also participated in monthly safety meetings that reviewed the safety incidents of the prior month but failed to assign action items to prevent a reoccurrence.

• Your Mentor knew that steel toed shoes were required within processing plant boundaries. But steel toes are rigid and uncomfortable. More comfortable street shoes were worn. And nobody cared about that. Unsurprisingly, more foot injuries were recorded plant wide.

• On a half-dozen occasions, Your Mentor slept sitting up because the loading of a fine adsorbent sieve that had taken place earlier in the day had been done without wearing a proper respirator. The phlegm that built up made normal sleeping impossible. Coughing up phlegm at night and being unable to sleep was considered "part of the job." There is a potential risk of long-term deleterious health outcomes due to ingestion of man-made industrial chemicals that neither the company nor I considered.

 

The Process Safety Management Standard of 1992

In 1986 a game changer occurred; a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India had a “learning experience” that killed over 2000 citizens living near the plant.

That incident ignited efforts to codify federal regulations that would reduce workplace failures and fatalities. Three more fatal processing incidents occurred before the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) completed the procedures that established the Process Safety Management Standard in 1992.

This legislation mandated specific actions to improve the process safety, industrial health, and environmental stewardship of  processing industries.

The outcomes of the PSM Standard include incorporating behavior based safety, industrial health, and environmental stewardship into the strategic plan at each facility. Nowadays, the top brass of a company and each employee share the responsibility for sustaining industrial health and safety. Everybody...Operators up through the company's Chief Executive Officer... is aware that discharges into the air, water, and land must not exceed allowable limits.

One indirect outcome of the PSM Standard was the establishment of formal degree programs to teach process technology operations.

 

Process Safety Management in Practice Nowadays:

The below examples illustrate how industries have changed operations to emphasize and incorporate a safety culture into company expectations.

• Your Mentor would not be allowed random access into the “hot zone” of a processing area even to perform a safety audit. A permit system tracks who is in the hot zone at all times. Nowadays, the modern Outside Operator understands his/her personal safety is dependent upon a safe environment and has been trained to identify and mitigate health and safety hazards.

• The monthly safety meeting would include action items as necessary to reduce the chance of reoccurrence. The safety meeting would also discuss ‘near misses’… incidents that DID NOT OCCUR because of somebody’s vigilance. Reviewing “near misses” is a proactive approach to safety because potential hazards are identified and removed before an incident occurs. Nowadays, the monthly safety meeting would also include the status of corporate wide safety goals. In the event a safety goal was achieved, each employee might be rewarded with a safety travel kit for the car or such.

• A fellow employee would ask Your Mentor to please wear assigned personal protective equipment (FRC clothing, steel toed boots, hard hat, hearing protection, gloves). The message delivered would not be punitive in nature but rather  an expression of concern for my wellbeing and a reminder that I have the power to be proactive regarding choices that promote safely working in a hazardous environment.

• An Industrial Health/Safety Technician from the Industrial Health/Safety Department would be aware that loading of fine adsorbent sieve was to occur. The technician would be trained to assess what personal protective equipment (PPE) was needed for that specific task. Loading the sieve would not start until the correct personal protection equipment was worn by personnel performing the work.

Industrial Health, Safety, and Environmental Awareness (HSE) topics are incorporated throughout PTOA segments.

 

Behavior Based Safety in the Home 

Your Mentor encourages PTOA Readers to develop a personal safety and health creed and make it part of the daily routine at home.

A proactive attitude toward personal health, safety, and environmental awareness extends into the workplace. Janice in Human Resources knows this and that’s what she’s looking for in prospective employees.

Here’s how you can start your own personal HSE program:

• Wear hearing protection when mowing lawns and while shop-vacuuming or anytime you anticipate being around prolonged loud mechanical noises.

• Wear eye protection when working on an automobile. Wear goggles when working around harsh liquids.

• Wear gloves when working with solvents, greases, gasoline and wash your hands to eliminate ingestion of toxics.

• Keep your eyes focused on the task at hand (like when using a knife for whatever reason).

• Use the right tool for the job (a step stool, not a chair; a hammer, not a shoe’s heel, etc.)

• Change out the batteries in your home’s fire and CO detectors when daylight savings time begins and ends.

• Find out when and where you can take old prescriptions, half containers of paint, and used batteries for proper environmental disposal.

• If you see a potential hazard, stop what you are doing and remove it immediately. Don’t expect someone else to eliminate the hazard.

 

Take Home Message: The processing industries highly value attitudes that incorporate safety, health, and environmental awareness 24/7. “Macho man hot-dogging” “reckless horsing around,” and “doesn’t apply to me” attitudes are dangerous and undesirable in a processing facility. PTOA Readers that are interested in processing careers need to sharpen up HSE awareness. The PTOA segments incorporate HSE awareness.

Photo credit: www.ehs.wsu.edu

 

©2014 PTOA Orientation Segment 13

 

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