Building on the concept of anticipating workplace hazards, co-hosts Mark Reggers and Laurie Wells welcome back 3M’s Lucre Pfefferman to discuss hazard recognition. From construction sites and manufacturing plants to chemical and pharmaceutical production, there are many potential hazards across workplaces. It is important for health and safety managers to assess their worksite for potential hazards. Tune in to learn more about this important health and safety concept along with tips and best practices to get started with hazard recognition.
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If you have any questions or topic suggestions, you can get in contact with this podcast
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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 Podcasts are 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 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 since we’ve last spoke about anticipation?
Laurie Wells:
Well, it’s been great, Mark. We had such a good discussion and I’ve been anticipating all this time that you were going to ask me a question. How have you been? So, how have you been?
Mark Reggers:
Certainly. Well, Lucre is my wonderful colleague from across the ditch. I’m in Australia, she’s in New Zealand. So Lucre, thank you so much for coming back.
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Oh, hi Mark. Hey Laurie. And I’m very, very happy to be back again. I have so much fun talking to you guys last time. And you said anticipation is very important, but it’s also good that we move to the next pillar of occupational hygiene. So it’ll be very good opportunity to talk about recognition now.
Mark Reggers:
Now, before we jump into that, for those that may not have listened to the previous episode or need a bit of a refresh of who Lucre is, can you just give us a bit of your background, who you are and what you do at 3M Lucre?
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Yes. well, I’ve been with 3M for almost three years now, and I am based in New Zealand. I am an occupational hygienist and in this role I go around to different workplaces and help them with the identification of what could be a, you know, a good PPE solution for the different hazards they have on site and the different risks. So it is really a great work I have. I enjoy visiting different workplaces and talking to people, talking to workers and health and safety professionals and, understand what they may need and how we can help from 3M point of view.
Mark Reggers:
Now, as we move on to the, the next pillar, as you, as you called it, moving on to the recognition stage, what does this involve in your experience?
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Well, recognition relates more to already existing workplaces. So this stage we need to understand a bit more about the different health hazards that are present in the workplace and what they can do to the workers or employees if they get exposed to those hazards. So then this means understanding what potential harm to workers’ health may be present at the specific workplace.
Mark Reggers:
Lucre, I think that’s a really, really important point that you’ve made there, as you know, this information will feed into any risk assessment process. All those required controls that’ll come down the track is going to be based on that initial assessment. I know from my experience, that some of the key physiological, biological, as I mentioned before, you are going to think about the inherent toxicity, what are the other health effects of these different agents? You know, and these can be incredibly broad and varied across industries. Which is why we’re trying to highlight a couple of these high level concepts for workplaces to have them think about in their application.
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Correct Mark. And as well as knowing the health hazard and the health effect, we must consider other aspect that relate to what we call exposure. So the approach to exposure may de differ a bit depending on the type of hazards that you mentioned before. We classify them in five subgroups. So in some instances, we are really interested in how the hazard enters the body. That will be the case for chemical type hazards where inhalation, ingestion or skin contact are the main three routes of entry to the body that we need to consider. But then once it’s in the body, it’s important to know what happened to them. So how the body gets rid of them, if that is possible. And if by doing that, what other chemicals may be created that may also cause harm. In other instances, we worry about how the health hazard is transmitted within the body. And this is the case, for example, for vibration, where we consider vibration transmitted to the body as a whole or vibration applied to part of the body, such as hand arm vibration.
Laurie Wells:
So for hazardous noise, which I’m assuming would also apply to many workplaces, although we know that there are several important health effects, it’s really the hearing mechanism itself that takes the main brunt of that energy. So we often times focus on either eliminating or minimizing the exposure to the worker or reducing the hazardous noise levels as a preventive mechanism. But there are other important things about that to consider in the characteristics of the noise itself. So, whether that exposure is what I would call an acute exposure or a chronic exposure, because they really have different destructive mechanisms depending on that type of noise source. So an acute would be kind of an immediate impact or impulsive noise that would cause potentially instantaneous damage. Whereas a chronic would be a long-term health effect that occurs maybe even over several, several years of exposure. So that day, day, month to month, year to year exposure. So I’m assuming that this may be relevant for other health hazards. So Lucre, could you comment on that?
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Yes, you’re a spot on Laurie. This considerations of the type of health hazard, acute, chronic are very important for any health hazard. You also must be aware that some health hazards have different health effect when they interact in the workplace. In some situations, the health effect is greater than the added effect of the individual hazard. I will also like to add in here that for some chemicals we must also check if their agent are sensitizers, irritants, asphyxiants. Perhaps we’re dealing with a target organ affecting chemical or carcinogenic chemical. They may be corrosive to the skin or the eyes or corrosive to guts or respiratory tract. And also they may interact with each other and produce new hazards.
Laurie Wells:
For chemical agents. Does the physical form and the physical property need to be considered?
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
It certainly does. So we need to ask the questions, are we dealing with a liquid or a solid or is the chemical in its gaseous form? And also the way the chemicals are used to apply can change the route of entry to the body. For example, if a liquid is been applied by spraying, that type of application create a mist, and those are little droplets of liquid that are suspended in the air. And in this scenario, we are faced now with an aerosol type hazard. So we have to consider the risk of inhalation as an important route of entry to the body. Some other physical properties that are important to consider would be, for example, for skin contact, are we dealing with lipophilic or lipophobic chemical. And for inhalation risk, for example, are we dealing with liquids that perhaps evaporate easily such as solvents.
Mark Reggers:
Not to make this more complex, but also thinking about where is the work being performed? You know, what is the temperature where the job is happening is also important. The evaporative effect, that cooling effect if we’re working in a cold environment versus the same job, maybe in a more hot and dry environment condition. So thinking also not just of the work, a bit evaporation from a chemical in your example. And then what about the heat stress implications of different environments and the metabolic work rates? There’s lots of things there.
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Yes, Mark, all of these are important consideration to understand how the health hazard can interact with the worker and what exposures routes are of interest. So I don’t want to overwhelm the listener, but recognition of hazards sometimes is challenging because many hazards cannot be seen, heard smelt or felt. Workers and workplaces, you don’t know what their exposure is. And sometimes workers in workplaces may accept exposures as an avoidable part of the job.
Laurie Wells:
Well, there is so much to consider; it’s just really a reminder of how critical the role of the health and safety professional is in trying to protect our workers. So is there any tips or a process that you could give to help people with this step that we’re calling recognition?
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Yes Laurie, it appeared to be a large and what Mike and I mentioned, I think is not an exhaustive list of consideration, but hopefully provides a bit of a starting point. And I just, before I forget, I wanted to add as well, the things that we should be reviewing these stages is previous monitoring results and reports; also if they have you know, the workplace have had some injury or illness in the past. And so, using our previous experience and information from reportable sources is also part of this recognition. So, to answer your question about tips, a great way to tackle this recognition stage is by observing the workplace, looking at the process, the materials or chemical used, the way the worker interacts at the different parts of the process, the location where the job happens within the plant, the shift length that they work and what controls are in place, they wear PPE, all of those are very important information. And all of that can be gathered during what we call a walkthrough survey. So the most practical method of implementing a recognition step in the workplace is by doing a walkthrough survey.
Laurie Wells:
Absolutely. Well, you know, you’ve given us a lot of information already. How does the person go about getting started with a hazard awareness or hazard identification process?
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Yes, so, I mentioned before that a really simple but valuable starting point is to conduct a site walkthrough survey to gather and document information from what is being seen and also from what is being heard by talking to workers and others in the workplace. That information that can be gathered through the walkthrough survey could include the site and process information. Also any problems that may come from discussion with management, supervisors and workers. Workers may often have a specific knowledge of machinery and the tasks they do and how well a process works or sometimes doesn’t work. Also some other information will be about the type and extend of worker training. You can gather that information through the walk survey as well as identifying the number of workers that are involved, what the shift pattern is, how long they work each day, and also sometimes identify those processes that are generating a potential hazard. Sometimes they tell you when they empty some containers into a bin that create a lot of dust and that can give you some good information in that walkthrough survey process.
Mark Reggers:
I know when I’ve done, you know, site assessments prior to my 3M working life as you say. It’s really, you know, you can’t underestimate talking to workers as you really can uncover a lot of what’s actually really happening versus what management may think is happening or should it be happening. So, you know, chatting to workers to delve deep adds a lot of value in these work walkthrough processes.
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Absolutely. Another thing that comes to mind here for me is about thinking what maintenance work is required that might also create those exposures to hazards. Also reviewing the controls that are in place if they’re effective. For example, if they got local exhaust ventilation, lev, which is a common one that may be present just checking that it is being used, you know, because sometimes they’re not even turned on when they should have been turned on. Visible conditions at the side can also give you a bit of information. So if you start to see subtle dust on surfaces, that could be a good indication that they may have an issue with airborne dust. And if they’re using PPE, just check in if it’s available, if they got a maintenance regime, if they got good storage facility for PPE. That is very important. And also finding out if workers have been trained on this specific around the PPE they’ve been provided.
Laurie Wells:
You know, a really simple tool that could be used when you’re doing a walkthrough for noise is, if you don’t have any fancy equipment available, you can use what we call sometimes the arms length rule or it’s just a general rule of thumb, or I like to say general rule of the ear. But essentially if you need to raise your voice to be heard at a distance of about one arm’s length, which is about a meter or three feet, then the level of noise is too high. It means that there is potentially hazardous sound there. So it’s a simple guideline, but it could be helpful, and helpful in training, even in recognizing situations that need assessment in the work environment.
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Yes. I use that one too, and I’m sure many of your listeners probably would as well. So, I think we cover well anticipation and recognition. Now the process leads to the evaluation stage so we can assess the health risks to determine what controls, if any, are required. So in some instances during this next evaluation stage, we need to undertake exposure monitoring and we use those numbers to compare those exposure monitoring results in order to categorize risk level and determine the level of control require. But I believe probably we ran out of time today to talk about that.
Mark Reggers:
I’m sure we could keep on talking for a long, long time, as there is a lot here if you start to delve deeper and scratch the surface. So unfortunately we don’t have time today to sort of keep going on into it, but fortunately we have some future podcast episodes planned to delve into that monitoring side of things. So we’ll continue this theme in future episodes. So be sure to keep an eye out for that, everyone.
Laurie Wells:
Well, I want to express my sincere thanks to you, Lucre. It’s been great having you on the podcast today. It’s such an important topic and I really appreciate you sharing your experience, your practical experience and all of your knowledge with us. So thank you so much.
Lucrecia Pfefferman:
Oh, thank you. It has been a pleasure being on the podcast.
Mark Reggers:
Well, it’s also, before we wrap up, just really important to remind all our listeners that you know, this is an area that the 3M Personal Safety Division team across the whole globe can assist your workplace with help to identify some of these common workplace hazards and where PPE may be suitable as part of your overall control approach and strategy. Of course, if we refer back to using that hierarchy control, the higher the control of that hierarchy is, the better that’s going to be. 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.