Page 63 - OHS, June 2023

GET MORE ELECTRICAL SAFETY EDUCATION could also be detrimental, right? ThThen the next question you have to ask yourself is: Am I going to be interacting with this piece of equipment? For example, am I going to be turning a breaker on, and am I going to be turning on a switch? And in all of those cases, you don’t have any exposed conductors, but you do have the arc flash hazard that could actually cause harm to you. The next thing I would do from a risk assessment standpoint, is ask, can I create an electrically safe work condition? Can I use lockout/tagout principles, test and verify the system, and ensure my equipment is functional? Then I would consider if I have to work on this while the power is still on, such as when turning something off or on, or performing diagnostic work. All of these tasks are considered energized work and operations. In such cases, what personal protective equipment can I use? Can I increase the distance between myself and the equipment? Can I utilize remote operating tools? These measures would transition from quantifying the risk to attempting to mitigate it. So, if this hazard has the potential to harm me, what strategies can I employ to reduce the risk? That would be my approach. OH&S magazine: And, talking about mitigation, obviously one of those items is personal protective equipment. What kind of PPE is necessary to adequately reduce exposure to injury? Jooma: First, let me go back to the questions of is it shock? Is it arc flash? From our accident investigations, we have observed that Electrical safety expert Zarheer Jooma, P.E., IEEE (SM’17) of e-Hazard (e-hazard.com) recently presented an electrical safety webinar for OH&S magazine that is available on ohsonline.com as an archived webinar. To access, simply visit the site, click on the “webinars” menu item, and scroll past the live events to get to our archives. There you can register for the archive and a link will be emailed to your inbox. risk assessment; and then finally coming up with risk mitigation strategies. You know, we always talk about an arc flash risk assessment, but in reality, what we are chasing here is the electrical safety risk assessment. So, when we talk about electrical safety, we think about the electrical hazards, and there are only two of them: There’s electrical arc flash and there’s electrical shock. And then people ask me, oh, what about the blast on the arc flash? Well, arc flash itself is broken up into two areas: One is the thermal component of it, and the other is a pressure component of it. But without getting into too much detail, the first thing that I would say is you have to do a site visit or a site assessment. You cannot just do an office-based assessment of what’s going on. ... In all of my learnings, I always see that the people who are injured the most are the people who do a mental risk assessment. OH&S magazine: Really? Why is that? Jooma: Firstly, let me just say I don’t have a problem with somebody just thinking out all of the risks onsite while they are there. But the problem with human beings is that we tend to overestimate our ability. You don’t really know what you don’t know. I’m not going to lean towards either one of these because to me, the correct thing to do is to first go out to site and identify the equipment that you are going to be working on. You need to ask, what am I working on? What are the non-electrical hazards that I’m exposed to? What is my core focus? And while focusing on that, is there not something else that’s going to hurt me? That assessment has to start with asking, am I exposed to shock or am I exposed to an arc flash hazard? And very simply, whenever you have energized exposed conductors, generally you are exposed to both a shock and an arc flash hazard. That’d the simplest definition that I can offer. Secondly, with regards to arc flash exposure is that an arc flash hazard is present whenever you are interacting with the equipment, and there is an energized path. You might not have any exposed energized conductors—anything within an arm’s reach that you can come into contact with unintentionally. Say, somewhere that I can accidentally get a tool or my finger or any part of my body onto something that’s carrying current that is not insulated. So think about copper bus bars. Think about a termination. Think about the wires that are going into a receptacle, for example. If you can touch that copper, if you can touch that aluminum, if you can touch that brass, then you are exposed to a shock hazard. OH&S magazine: And how considerable is the risk? Jooma: If the energy is substantial enough, then the arc flash hazard Can Your Company Afford the Cost of a Cut? 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