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IH:CHEMICAL SAFETY
tools to easily provide first responders with seamless access to all your SDSs, indexed product summaries, facility floor plans, chemical container maps, and chemical in- ventory lists available in your system. With this information in hand ahead of time, first responders can more appropriately plan for incidents and are not left in the dark on critical chemical hazards when try- ing to address rising emergency concerns.
Employee Training
OSHA’s HazCom Standard requires em- ployers to train employees on key infor-
mation contained within SDSs—including health and physical hazards, storage and disposal requirements and emergency response information—prior to them working with any hazardous chemicals. Software can make the management and deployment of this training easier by en- abling you to share details of your IH sam- pling program with workers and provide specific training on your chemical hazards and exposure assessments. We recommend chemical management solutions that also offer engaging training content and help- ful tools to schedule trainings and docu-
ment training completion. Most of these software products have built-in email no- tification features that remind employees and managers when training deadlines and certification dates are coming up or are past due. Centralized systems for accessing and storing training tracking metrics keep your information up-to-date, and make it acces- sible anywhere in the organization.
Forming Similar Exposure Groups
Assessing exposures and identifying hazards for each individual employee is a rigorous and costly process. Best prac- tices today suggest grouping employees who likely have similar exposures based on job tasks, frequency and duration of exposure, and similar use of controls into Similar Exposure Groups (SEGs) to avoid having to assess every individual employee within your organization Data from a small sample of workers can be used to predict the exposure of the whole group, saving you significant time and staff resources. From there, you can then determine which SEGs require medical surveillance, qualitative exposure assess- ments, and additional air sampling.
A critical step when forming SEGs is defining the list of potential stressors they could be potentially exposed to. Here again, a good chemical management in a broader EHS software solution with a robust IH product helps you create and manage SEGs and synchronize them across your organi- zation. IH software features also help you manage your SEGs by including person- nel histories and using data from the SEGs to auto-populate other IH functions, like providing key information to your medical surveillance and IH sampling programs— all of which save you significant time versus the traditional spreadsheet approach.
Choose Simple
You can’t be everywhere at once and—as previously mentioned—the need for IH has increased while the people and re- sources necessary to manage it have be- come scarcer. The right software can im- prove and streamline all aspects of your program to help you meet the challenges of IH in changing times and provide a safer, healthier workplace for all.
Dave Risi, CIH, CSP is the Director of In- dustrial Hygiene Solutions at VelocityEHS.
www.ohsonline.com
Emergency Response Training from Start to Finish
Practice dialing 9-1-1 and activating alarms with the all new R.A.C.E. Station, featuring training smartphone and realistic sights and sounds.
WWW.LIONPROTECTS.COM/RACE-STATION
20 Circle 12 on card.