Page 18 - Occupational Health & Safety, August 2018

CONFINED SPACES
The resources are out there for all employers to mitigate, or eliminate, the risks of injury or a fatality(s) when their workers are entering confined spaces to perform maintenance, repairs or inspections, or other work.
permit required confined space entry and rescue training at facili- ties after a fatality(s). I have seen the faces of the workers who are grieving the loss of their co-worker(s). I have heard how distraught they are when they find out their employer didn’t do what was re- quired by OSHA.
The resources are out there for all employers to mitigate, or eliminate, the risks of injury or a fatality(s) when their workers are entering confined spaces as a part of their work function to per- form maintenance, repairs or inspections, or other work. There is no excuse to not change the statistics. And if your facility does not have the internal resources necessary to investigate, evaluate, plan, and, most importantly, make changes, find a highly qualified and reputable third-party company that can assist in written proce- dures, training, and identifying the proper equipment.
Protecting workers is the law and, more importantly, it’s the right thing to do. Your financial investment in a good permit con- fined space program, training, and equipment is minimal com-
pared to the OSHA citations and the lawsuits that may be filed due to the death of a worker in a confined space. And the cost of keeping on with the old adage, some things never change, is even much higher. The reality is the loss of a worker(s) to a confined space incident is not an option. The reality is with proper training and equipment, the loss of workers working in and around permit required confined spaces can be prevented.
It’s time for the NIOSH and OSHA statistics to change.
Chris Koester is the owner of Priority One Safe-T, LLC, an emer- gency response and standby rescue services and training firm for industrial and manufacturing companies. He is also a captain with the Springfield, MO Fire Department and has more than 21 years of experience as a volunteer and career firefighter. He holds numer- ous firefighting and instructor certifications and is an adjunct in- structor for the Northeast Technology Center and University of Mis- souri Fire and Rescue Training Institute. He has been a Hazardous Materials Technician for more than 15 years and is a member of the Southwest Missouri Incident Support Team, the Hazardous Materi- als Training and Research Institute (HMTRI), the Partnership for Environmental Technology Education (PETE), the Community College Consortium for Health & Safety Training (CCCHST), the National Institute of Environmental Health and Safety (NIEHS), and the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP). He can be reached at inquiry@priority1safe-t.com.
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