Page 42 - Occupational Health & Safety, September 2018

CHEMICAL SAFETY
Your Blueprint for Chemical Safety Training
This type of training must occur early, often, and as close or specific to the actual location and usage scenario as possible. BY KRAIG HABERER
Employee training is one of the five key pillars to OSHA’s Hazard Communication standard here in the United States. But what do you need to do? How often do you need to train?
What training content should be provided? What’s the most effective means of training workers for both quick understanding, but also long-term knowledge retention? These are the questions that most often come to mind.
Employees have a right not to get hurt at work, and employers have a responsibility to take every reason- able measure to provide a safe work environment. Not every hazard or incident can be prevented, but some core training and continuing education will make your facility a safer place to work.
Chemicals present an unusual set of safety con- cerns and requirements. Chemicals can be unpre- dictable, are not always in a fixed location and, in some cases, can be incompatible to other chemicals in the immediate work environment. Therefore, chemical safety training must occur early, often, and as close or specific to the actual location and usage scenario as possible.
Be In the Know
Prior to embarking on your chemical safety training, you should have a chemical safety program defined and in place. Safety data sheets, the primary form of chemical information, are becoming increasingly dense with detailed technical information. Conse- quently, some basic employee protections and pre- cautions can get lost in translation. Therefore, it’s imperative that your training efforts refocus back to the original goal of the SDS, which is to help and protect workers.
OSHA requires organizations that store or use hazardous chemicals in the workplace to address five key requirements for chemical safety:
1. Written Program
2. Chemical Inventory
3. Safety Data Sheets
4. Chemical Labels
5. Employee Training
Employee training is listed last not as a ranked or-
der of importance, but rather a statement to the fact that the other four elements are prerequisites of an effective chemical safety training program. OSHA de-
38 Occupational Health & Safety | SEPTEMBER 2018
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