Page 44 - Occupational Health & Safety, August 2017
P. 44
CONFINED SPACES
Why Use NFPA 350, Guide for Safe Confined Space Entry and Work?
OSHA tells you what to do; NFPA 350 tells you how to do it by providing supporting information on how to identify hazards, perform gas monitoring, control hazards, and ventilate.
BY NANCY PEARCE
The question I am most frequently asked about NFPA 350, Guide for Confined Space Entry and Work is, “Why do we need another confined space standard?” OSHA’s Permit Required Confined Space Standard became effective in 1993, finally leading the way to safer confined space entries. OSHA’s Confined Spaces in Construction stan- dard, released in 2015, is expected to further improve confined space safety.
While documentation of fatalities in confined spaces has been incomplete, the general consensus is that between 90 and 100 workers die each year in confined spaces. These numbers seem to remain con- sistent despite regulations. In fact, the most recent Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that 136 work- ers were killed in incidents associated with confined
spaces in 2015. This indicates either an alarming in- crease in deaths or better reporting.
Those of us who work in the confined space world read about single or multiple confined space fatalities on a weekly basis. Despite regulations, there is clearly still room for improvement. NFPA’s Guide for Safe Confined Space Entry and Work supplements OSHA standards and provides additional guidance on “how to” enter and work in confined spaces to improve con- fined space entry programs.
While some of the confined space fatalities are due to a simple lack of compliance with existing OSHA standards, others appear to result from gaps in exist- ing standards and confusion about what is required for confined space entry. The standards used in con- fined space entry are performance standards, mean- ing they focus on the desired outcome—preventing
38 Occupational Health & Safety | AUGUST 2017
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