Page 32 - Occupational Health & Safety, May 2018

INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE
Tips for Creating a More Successful Industrial Hygiene Program
With the right strategies and tools, you’ll overcome the challenges and create an industrial hygiene program that protects your most important asset—your employees.
BY ZOË FRANCES
The Occupational Safety and Health Admin- istration defines industrial hygiene as “the practice of anticipating, recognizing, evalu- ating and controlling workplace conditions that may cause workers’ injury or illness.” That’s the kind of definition that read one way can seem gener- al, and when read another way, can seem overwhelm- ing. There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to indus- trial hygiene—and a lot that employers simply must get right. Let’s review the basics of industrial hygiene and strategies for making sure your company has a successful program.
Getting Started: Risk Analysis
Industrial hygiene, like so much else in EHS manage- ment, really begins with good risk analysis. We can’t protect employees from hazards in the workplace un- less we first identify them. One of the most effective methods is to break jobs into a manageable number of tasks (try for no more than 10), work with and ob- serve employees conducting these tasks, and pay close attention to the actual and potential hazards. Be sure to include chemical exposure hazards, biological haz- ards (e.g., mold), and physical hazards (ionizing and nonionizing radiation, vibration, illumination, tem- perature, noise) and to assess both routine and non- routine jobs.
Also, don’t overlook these commonly ignored haz- ards in your evaluation:
■ Hazards from beautification/renovation: Many paints used on factory floors and walls contain sol- vents and other chemicals with established OSHA ex- posure limitations—for instance, topcoats and prim- ers often contain methyl methacrylate. Renovation and construction projects can also generate hazards such as noise or nuisance dust.
■ Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM): The name says it all—this is radioactive ma- terial found naturally within the earth, and it’s easy to overlook for exactly that reason. NORM often rises to the surface as a byproduct of oil and gas production and can become concentrated on production strings, flowlines, pipelines, and other equipment. So, for in- stance, if you operate “pump shops” that clean and service oil exploration field equipment that may come into contact with NORM, your employees may have exposure risks.
■ Short-term exposures: Sometimes when evalu- ating potential exposures, we miss exposures from processes that are conducted for short durations of
time, especially when they’re not conducted daily. For example, there may be a cleaning solvent that is occasionally used on process tanks, and the entire duration of exposure may be under 20 minutes, but sufficiently high concentrations during that time may pose exposure risks.
Once hazards are identified, introduce controls to limit exposures or reduce the consequences of expo- sure. Remember to use the hierarchy of controls (see Figure 1) as a guide to remind the team that elimi- nating the hazards is always the best option and that you must resort to personal protective equipment such as respirators only after more effective controls have not reduced exposures to acceptable levels. Re- member, if you provide respirators other than volun- tary use varieties, you will need a formal Respiratory Protection Program.
Figure 1
Similar Exposure Groups
A similar exposure group (SEG) is a group of employ- ees who have common risks and similar exposure pro- files. Use of SEGs can help streamline your IH program. You can define a SEG based on knowledge of the ac- tivities employees conduct, expecting that similar tasks with similar regularity will result in similar exposures (qualitative approach), or you can define them based on direct exposure measurements (quantitative).
The best option is to use an integrated approach that begins with determining which employees con- duct similar tasks with common exposure risks, then to validate that with direct exposure monitoring and
28 Occupational Health & Safety | MAY 2018
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