There are many different types of potential health hazards across different segments and industries. In this episode of the Global Science of Safety Podcast, co-hosts Mark Reggers and Laurie Wells discuss workplace hazard awareness with 3M’s Lucre Pfefferman. Lucre is a Certified Occupational Hygienist working for 3M New Zealand in the Personal Safety Division. Tune in to learn more with Mark, Laurie, and Lucre as they discuss the concept of anticipating hazards. Anticipating workplace hazards is an important step to help enable early intervention to eliminate or plan for controlling potential hazards before they are introduced into the workplace.
This global podcast series provides another educational tool that can help increase your knowledge and is something that you can share with others in your organization and with your friends. The goal is to help provide a global perspective and foundation for those of you who are new to workplace health and safety and personal protective equipment (PPE) while also providing information for more experienced professionals who handle complex health and safety challenges.
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Below is the full transcript of the podcast:
Podcast Presenter:
The 3M Science of Safety Podcast is a free publication. The information presented in this podcast is general only should not be relied upon to make specific decisions. Listening to this podcast does not certify proficiency in safety and health. You should always seek the advice of a licensed or certified professional in relation to your specific work or task. Always consult the User Instructions for any personal protective equipment you are using and follow local laws and regulations. Information presented is current as of the date of the podcast, and requirements can change in the future. 3M owns all rights to the podcast and any reproduction is strictly prohibited without permission.
Mark Reggers:
Welcome back to all our previous subscribers and new listeners. The Science of Safety Podcast is presented by the 3M Personal Safety Division. This is a podcast that is curious about the science and systems behind workplace health and safety with a focus on personal protective equipment (or PPE) used to help keep workers healthy and safe. I’m Mark Reggers, one of your co-hosts with the fantastic Laurie Wells with me. We are occupational health and safety professionals who’d like to ask the questions why, how, and please explain. Whether you’re a safety, professional, occupational or industrial hygienist, someone with any level of worker health and safety responsibility in your workplace, a user of PPE or a health and safety nerd, then this is the podcast for you. Hey, Laurie, how have you been? It feels like it’s been way too long since we’ve last spoke.
Laurie Wells:
It has been a long time Mark. It’s great to be here and to hear your lovely voice again. So what’s going on?
Mark Reggers:
You are too kind, I was going to ask you what’s been happening in the world of hearing protection? Anything exciting I should know about?
Laurie Wells:
You know, I was thinking about that you know, in the hearing world, we have certain days that are designated to think about hearing like World Hearing Day. And we recently had International Noise Awareness Day. And it made me wonder, do you have something similar to that? Do you have like a world breathing day?
Mark Reggers:
A world breathing day? Look, I know there’s a, NIOSH respirator week, you know, based in the US that’s sort of followed around the world; which is always exciting for me as well. But it’s always great to have these kind of days or moments to think about and focus on these different aspects. So I’m glad we have these kind of things in our wonderful world of health and safety, for sure.
Laurie Wells:
Well, for sure.
Mark Reggers:
Now I’m actually super excited to introduce today’s guest as she is one of my wonderful colleagues I get to work with on a day-to-day basis. Today we are talking with Lucre Pfefferman all about workplace hazard awareness. Welcome, Lucre.
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Hello, Mark and hello Laurie. It’s a pleasure to be here and to discuss, hazard awareness with you both and also with your listeners.
Mark Reggers:
Now as we like to do with all our guests. Can you please tell us a little bit more about yourself, your role at 3M and where do you reside in this wonderful world of ours?
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Of course. Well, I am a certified occupational hygienist and I work for 3M in New Zealand. I have been in this role for a little bit more than three years now. And in this role I get to interact with a lot of workplaces as part of the risk assessment process to provide support with PPE solutions. As we all know, there is no one solutions for all and understanding the specific for each workplace is critical. By now I think you probably are intrigued about my accent and yes, I’m not a hundred percent New Zealander. I am originally from Argentina, and I moved to this beautiful country more than 20 years ago. For the last 16 years I’ve been working in the occupational hygiene field in a variety of industries as an in-house occupational hygienist, but also I did some work providing occupational hygiene consulting services, all of that prior to joining 3M.
Laurie Wells:
Well, wonderful. Lucre, thank you so much for being with us to share your experience. I know it is rich and deep. When we think about hazard awareness, there are so many different types across all industries in varying levels and complexity. So when it comes to hazard awareness for the workplace and for the workers, tell us about your approach. How do you think about this?
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Well, being an occupational hygienist, I tend to fall back to the basic principles of anticipation, recognition, evaluation and control. So we generally call this four steps the pillars of occupational hygiene. In this, I’m sure will be very familiar to many of your listeners. I would like to clarify at this point that in the talk today, when we are talking about hazards we are referring primarily to health hazards. In other words, those hazards then can pose a risk to workers’ health.
Mark Reggers:
And these types of hazards, I guess broadly in the occupational or industrial hygiene world, we’d like to generally group these hazards under these sort of broad categories, them being chemical agents, so thinking about gases, vapors, dust, fumes, just to name a couple there. Then we have physical agents like noise and vibration. We have biological agents such as bacteria or mold. Ergonomic factors. I am thinking about repetitive motions or stretching. Psychosocial factors like bullying and workload impacts.
So all these hazards are incredibly important as we know. But you know, as an occupational hygienist, we and many other health professions and allied health profession associations really focus on protecting workers’ health when it comes to what they’re being exposed to in the workplace.
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Yes, Mike. So to answer your question, Laurie, when I think about health hazard awareness from those four pillars I mentioned before, the first two that come to mind are anticipation and recognition.
Laurie Wells:
Okay. So I’ve heard those terms before though some of our listeners may not be quite as familiar. So could you go into a little bit more depth about anticipation and recognition?
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Yes, of course I can. This is what I am here for.
Laurie Wells:
Excellent, excellent. So when you say anticipation, that doesn’t mean that you have to be a mind reader or a fortune teller to know if something unsafe is going to happen, right?
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
No, not quite. So, anticipation involves identifying potential hazards before they’re introduced into a workplace. So in other words, identifying potential health hazards and the health risks at the developing stage of a new plant or process or prior to implementing changes to a process that may involve changes the way a job or a task is done, or perhaps prior to introducing a new chemical to be used on site. This anticipation stage is also important while we are reviewing job or task as part of a planning maintenance turnaround or shutdown. So it’s very, very important to anticipate health hazards and health risk at that stage.
Mark Reggers:
Look, you know, not to harp at this point anymore, but it is so critical about that anticipation, being able to intervene as early in a process as possible as you’re trying to highlight there. Because the more we can do at that stage, it’s going to be better down the track, you know, and even hypothetically as we’re all aiming to maybe eliminate some of these potential health risks that may be there.
Laurie Wells:
Okay. So I need some specific examples. What could be done in this anticipation stage?
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Well, this stage we could be considering potential adjustment in the proposed changes, for example. And those could be trying to reduce exposure. So we are thinking about maybe enclosing areas that may generate a health hazard and perhaps is of interest to you Laurie, but you know, looking at trying to install equipment that maybe is more quiet to run that other equipment or perhaps selecting a chemical that will still provide the same outcome but poses less risk to health. So these are just some examples. It is really a little bit what Mark said: There is so much that can be done at this point that could have a huge benefit for worker’s health in the long term. So I will be reviewing the site plans and identifying where specific chemicals will be handled and how they will be handled. Using knowledge of similar type of workplaces for example to allow me to determine what the health hazards I will need to be considering. Checking what raw materials are going to be used and in which form they would come to site and in which quantity. And also how they’re going to be stored, are they going to be transferred from one place to another and how they’re going to be used. And of course reviewing safety data sheets for chemicals if that is applicable.
Mark Reggers:
A few more that come to mind as you’re going through some of these Lucre, thinking about those confined spaces that may be in many workplaces there, you know, what’s gonna happen inside those spaces? Can those tasks be taken outside of the confined space? You know, thinking about that future plan maintenance type of work, you know. Thinking about what are the use of tools or processes that, as we say can be noisy, can we reduce, use other tools or do it in a less noisy way? And thinking about the vibration that may also be generated through different tools and, operations as well.
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
And another one that comes to mind as well for me is understanding what access might be required for work as during normal operation and also during maintenance. And an example that I was involved in my previous job, for example, if you know, if you need to include a drain valve in the system, well if the valve needs to be operated manually, then the location of that valve become important at the design stage. So, it is place where the operator can reach avoided any awkward position or awkward movement. So Laurie, as you can see, we can keep adding more and more to the list.
Laurie Wells:
Absolutely. I see there really are so many things that can be used to anticipate hazards. So thank you for those examples.
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Yes, and also I think it will be important to highlight that there are some work situations where safety datas or SDS are not available for hazards chemicals, but some in those situations, sometimes, the nature of the hazard is well known. So, looking at alternative sources of information for example, code of practice or guidance and research publication, that can be quite handy. And I think it’s important as well to keep an eye on emerging issues that come to line because it is new data available and that is really paramount around health hazards and health risk because what was acceptable in this field sometime ago may not be acceptable anymore with the current knowledge. And also another thing that, I think is important, is when we are in front of potential hazards or safety issues that are not so well known, very important in those situations to engage specialist expertise and do further research.
Laurie Wells:
Okay. So look who should be involved at this stage?
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Well, that is a great question, Laurie, because in this anticipation phase is so, so that we work in a collaborative environment. Where planners, designers, process engineers, workers of course occupational hygienist, occupational medicine, professional health and safety professionals, we all get involved as we all have so much to add at this point with our own different experience and knowledge.
Mark Reggers:
That’s why consultation is so important with all these different roles. And that’s just obviously a very limited sort of roles that you’ve highlighted there. And this is where I think sometimes anticipation is, you know, a bit underutilized at times because it may be perceived as taking a bit too much time. But highlighted earlier, anticipation can have huge benefits and save a lot of time and effort and resources in the future. So nothing is better than being well prepared. So not to put you on the spot, Lucre, but are these things a legal requirement for workplaces, for workplaces and employees to identify these types of hazard? Or would you say it’s more of a hey, it’s a best practice recommendation that should be done if it can be done?
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
It absolutely is a legal requirement here in New Zealand and in Australia and broadly it’s also a legal requirement in most location across the globe. So using New Zealand as an example, the Health and Safety at Work Act has a specific requirements for the person conducting a business or undertaking, we call PCBU for short. And those requirements are in regards to workers health and safety as well as anybody that may be affected by the work carry out by the business. So a PCBU in our part of the world is broad term used throughout work health and safety legislation to describe all forms of modern work in arrangement. And another way that we, you know, you can refer to PCBU use will be a businesses or employers.
Laurie Wells:
Now anytime this topic of regulation comes up, we want to make sure that everybody realizes that you need to check your local legal requirements because there are differences regionally and differences in regulations. But having said that, it’s very safe to say that there’s an overarching duty of care and a requirement to identify hazards and to manage those associated risks to protect the workers.
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Yes, that will be the case, Laurie. And I think it’s also important to remember that although it is a legal requirement, it is simply just the right thing to do to look after all workers wherever they are doing so they can go home to the families and loved one each and every day. Plus it just makes smart business sense most of the time. I think businesses spend a lot of time and training the workers, so then the workers or employees become an important asset to each workplace,- wouldn’t you look after your assets?
Mark Reggers:
Lucre, we don’t have time today to sort going on, but fortunately we have some future podcast episodes.
Laurie Wells:
Well, I want to express my sincere thanks to you Lucre. It’s been great having you on the podcast today.
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Oh, thank you. It has been a pleasure being on the podcast.
Mark Reggers:
Well, thanks for listening, everyone. You can listen, subscribe to and share this podcast through Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, and most major podcast apps and platforms. If you have any questions, topic suggestions, or like some assistance in your workplace when it comes to the appropriate selection, use, and maintenance of PPE. You can get in contact with this podcast by contacting your local 3M office or visiting our website mmm.com Around the world we aim to help everyone get the job done safely today, tomorrow, and in the future. Thanks for listening and have a safe day. Stay healthy, Laurie.
Laurie Wells:
Stay safe and sound mark.
Mark Reggers:
Thanks everyone.
Bye
Laurie Wells:
Bye-bye.