What is asbestos???

Asbestos is a naturally occurring fibrous material that was a popular building material from the 1950s to 1990s. It was used extensively because it is an insulator, has good fire protection properties, has tensile strength, and is resistant to chemical erosion. Unfortunately, it’s hard to know if you’re working with asbestos because it is often mixed with other materials. However, if you work in a building built before 1990, it's likely that at least some parts of the building will contain asbestos.

Common uses

Some of the more common uses of asbestos in buildings are shown below.

· Spray applied fireproofing

Found as fire protection on structural supports (e.g. columns and beams), walls and ceilings. Asbestos containing and non-asbestos containing forms of spray applied fireproofing may be found.

· Mechanical insulation

Mechanical insulation can be found on mechanical systems, including: boilers, vessels, tanks and pipes. These materials often have a high asbestos content.

· Linoleum

In older homes, the paper backing on some linoleum (sheet flooring) may contain high concentrations of asbestos. The paper packing tears easily and can result in high fibre levels if disturbed and appropriate procedures are not used.

· Floor tiles

Resilient floor tiles in all sizes may contain asbestos. A common myth is that you can tell by the size alone if the floor tile is likely to contain asbestos, you cannot.

· Drywall taping compound

Drywall taping compound, or drywall mud, sometimes referred to simply as drywall, often contains asbestos. In addition to covering seams, taping compound is also used to cover holes, screws and nails and will be feathered out over a large area for a smooth appearance. As a result, the entire drywall sheet should be treated as asbestos containing.

· Vermiculite

Vermiculite is a light-weight, fire-resistant material. It has been used in numerous products, including insulation for attics and walls. If you have vermiculite insulation in your home, you should assume this material is contaminated with asbestos, unless appropriate sampling by a qualified person determines otherwise.

· Asbestos cement board and tiles

Cement boards are often located on exterior buildings, forming wall coverings and roofs. They may appear as flat sheets, in corrugated sheet or as smaller overlapping tiles. They may be used indoors in electrical panels, as a heat shield around fireplaces and heating components, as blackboards, as peg board and as wall coverings.

· Asbestos cement pipes

Asbestos cement pipes are commonly found as water supply and drain pipes.

· Textured decorative coating

Textured and decorative finishes on walls and ceilings in older buildings often contains asbestos.

Highland Towers collapse

The Highland Towers collapse was an apartment building collapse that occurred on 11 December 1993 in Taman Hillview, Ulu Kelang, Selangor, Malaysia. The collapse of Block One of the apartments caused the deaths of 48 people and led to the complete evacuation of the other two blocks due to safety concerns. Behind the Towers was a small stream of water known as 'East Creek'. East Creek flowed into the site of the Towers before the Towers' construction. Later, a pipe system was built to divert the stream to bypass the Towers.

In 1991, a new housing development project, known as 'Bukit Antarabangsa Development Project', commenced on the hilltop located behind the Towers. As a result, the hill was cleared of trees and other land-covering plants, exposing the soil to absorb more water. The water from the construction site was diverted into the same pipe system used to divert the flow of East Creek. Eventually, the pipe system became overly pressurized with the water, sand and silt from both East Creek and the construction site. The pipes burst at various locations on the hill, and the soil had to absorb the excessive water. The monsoon rainfall in December 1993 further worsened the situation.

The water content in the soil had exceeded a dangerous level, and the soil had literally turned into mud. By October 1992, the hill slope had been almost flooded with water, and it was reported that water was seen flowing down the hill slopes and the retaining walls. Soon after, a landslip took place and destroying the poorly-constructed retaining walls. The landslide was so strong that it has a force equivalent to 200 Boeing 747 jets. The soil rammed onto the foundation of Block One, pushing it forward for a while before causing it to snap and bringing down the apartment block.

The official death toll released by the authorities was 48, though other sources gave a number greater than 55. The victims are mainly Malaysian, with 12 foreigners (a Briton, a Japanese, 2 Indians, 2 Koreans, 3 Filipino and 3 Indonesian). A month before the building fell, in November 1993, residents began to see cracks forming and widening on the road around the Highland Towers, a sign of the collapse that sadly not much people took notice.

OSH ISSUE RESOLUTION - OSH Article October 2011

SAFETY CULTURE IN THE WORKPLACE

What is a safety culture in the workplace?

A safety culture is made up of shared and accepted attitudes, beliefs and practices supported by documented policies and procedures throughout an organization. It is an atmosphere that shapes safe behaviors and practices. A safety culture takes time to create and results in everyone's commitment to safety as an important part of doing business.

What will a safety culture do in the workplace?

OSHA recommends looking at safety with these four questions:

1.) What is the return on investment of a safety and health program? 

A safety and health program will produce an increase in morale, reductions in workplace injuries and insurance costs, and a safety culture. Other benefits of a safety culture include enhanced reputation with customers and vendors, industry and community recognition for safe practices, and improved business reputation to attract employees.

2.) How can safety and health become a part of the business? 

Safety and health can become part of the business by integrating safety and health standards with performance standards, communicating safety and health issues and taking action on them, support from the top, and involving everyone.

3.) What measurements will reflect the business' safety and health success or failure? Measurements to gauge safety success or failure include statistical reports on accident and injury rates and costs, opinion surveys polling what employees think about safety, risk analysis by insurance vendors or outside parties, periodic inspections including self-audits, and process improvements.

4.) What are the best practices for ensuring safety and health program success in the business? 

The best practices include obtaining management support, creating trust, performing regular self-assessments, creating a system of accountability and measures, incorporating recognition and rewards, providing awareness training, making process changes, continuous measurement, communication of results and celebrations of successes.

Obstacles to Creating a Safety Culture

There are many obstacles to creating a safety culture, but the main obstacles are lack of management support, and fear and lack of trust. Safety must be communicated from the top of an organization down as a priority at least equal to, if not more important than, production and profit. If not, a true commitment to safety will be lacking. Safety culture development must begin with management support and trust. Good communication and implementation facilitate success.

  

Processes to Create a Safety Culture

A safety culture needs strong top-down support, good communication, established processes and built-in accountability. OSHA recommends defining safety responsibilities throughout the organization, developing measures, teaming management with supervisors and employees through shared safety and health vision and goals, and making everyone accountable for involvement in safety. Safety responsibilities can be written into job descriptions and performance evaluations, accident rates should be recorded and communicated, a safety mission and goal statement can be published, and everyone can be rated on their safety record and involvement.

Philosophical of Culture in OSH:
Communication - Komunikasi
Urge - Ketegasan
Leadership - Kepimpinan
Teamwork – Kerja Berpasukan
Understanding - Persefahaman
Recognition - Pengiktirafan
Empowerment – Peningkatan Kemahiran

Chemical Hazard in Food

Chemical hazard are chemicals that can get into food by improper storage of chemical or chemical containers or by using chemicals improperly.

Generally, industrial pollutants are unintentional contaminants of foods, even if regulated, may be difficult to control.

Some toxic chemical compounds can occur naturally in foods and in the environment.

Chemical hazards can cause food borne disease and the consumer health. This includes naturally occurring substances, such as allergens, and toxins and contamination of food with chemicals substance, their residue or their degradation products at levels that can harm the consumers.

Chemical hazards include:

• pesticides

• food additives and preservatives

• cleaning and sanitizing supplies

• toxic metals that leech through worn cookware and equipment

• lubricants used on equipment

The above chemicals must be approved by federal agency before they can be legally used. If a chemical leaves a residue in food, the cognizant agency is responsible for establishing a tolerance level – the amount of residue that can legally remain in or on raw and processed foods.

NAPA / Welding accident kills worker / Man burns to death inside pipe after torch ignites clothes

A construction worker was killed Wednesday when a welding torch apparently ignited his clothes while he was working inside a steel drainage pipe at a construction site at Highway 29 in Napa.

The man, whose name was not released, was trapped inside the pipe and burned to death, according to the Napa Fire Department.

The worker had entered the pipe to perform either welding or cutting with an acetylene torch. The pipe was 24 inches in diameter, and the man was about 40 feet inside the pipe when the fire broke out.

How to prevent?

Let's be clear about welding safety: I will discuss safety issues throughout this site.

These are the areas that I will cover:
* Safe clothing
* Fire safety
* Use of arc welding equipment
* Use of the torch
* Safe practices in general
* Equipment gone bad
* Arc "flashes, shocks, burns, "pinch points", and more

>Clothing can be a real pain-saver for you, literally.

>Fire prevention is better than fire fighting!

>Arc welding equipment involves many hazards. I'll fill you in.

>The torch can burn you INSTANTLY.

>There are several general safety issues about every aspect of welding, cutting, & material handling.

>"Stuff happens" to equipment that can make it unsafe.

>Other safety examples include: arc flashes, shocks, burns, safe material handling, & more.

Effort towards better working conditions and environment: An active safety committee

Establishing an active safety committee is a prerequisite for joint management and worker efforts for better safety, health and working conditions. The legal and social conditions for setting up such a committee can be different from country to country. The committee may be called a safety committee, a safety and health committee or a specialized unit of a joint management-worker consultation body. In a very small enterprise, it may not be called a committee, but simply a safety group or a group of people in which both management and workers are represented.

The primary purpose of the safety committee is to prevent accidents, but other activities include reviewing occupational safety and health programmes and the relevant welfare facilities of the enterprise. Thus the committee is involved in corrective measures spanning the entire range of the above mentioned workplace inspections.

The following duties are usually assigned to safety committees:

§ Meet at regular times to discuss the safety and health programmed of the enterprise and to make recommendations to management.

§ Make systematic inspections of workplace conditions at regular times to discover and report unsafe and unsatisfactory conditions and practices.

§ Review the circumstances and causes of accidents or occupational illnesses and recommend corrective measures.

§ Discuss unsafe or unsatisfactory conditions at the workplace.

§ Examine suggestions that employees make about safety.

§ Plan and supervise educational activities in safety and relevant areas.

Information given by employees often helps the safety committee. Therefore, the committee member should, in inspection rounds or through their daily contacts, listen to suggestion by employees and bring them up at the committee meeting. Committee members should try to bring up practical suggestions in the committee discussions so that they can be reported to the management for action. The committee should maintain its independent position and base its recommendations on its own observations and careful discussions.

Investigating an accident may not be a routine part of the safety committee’s job, but there is hardly a committee that has not been asked to review the circumstances of an accident and find out what caused it. The committee should tactfully help collect accurate information. Remember that the purpose of an accident review is to find out how to prevent similar accident in the future. The committee should not be involved in making accusations.

Attitudes for safety will grow if people take part in discussions about how accidents can be prevented. The committee should present facts about actual conditions and help organize such discussions. The committee can work effectively when it reports and recommends, and does not complain.

Putting Safety First Can Prevent Scaffolding Hazards

Putting Safety First Can Prevent Scaffolding Hazards

An estimated 2.3 million construction workers, or 65 percent of the construction industry, work on scaffolds. Protecting these workers from scaffold-related accidents may prevent some of the 4,500 injuries and over 60 deaths every year based on Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). For information, 72 percent of workers injured in scaffold accidents attributed the accident either to the planking or support giving way, or to the employee slipping or being struck by a falling object.

Based on OSHA citation for scaffolding were issued last year, representing a 30-percent increase over 2008 and topping OSHA’s 2009 list of the 10 most frequently cited safety violation.

The following are a few cases selected from an accident investigation search of OSHA's database :

• Electric Shock - Contact with Overhead Line through Scaffold
• Employee Killed in Scaffold Collapse
• Employee Killed When Box Falls
• Employee Breaks His Back in Fall From Scaffolding
• Employee Killed in Fall From Scaffolding
• Employee Injured After Being Struck By Collapsing Scaffold
• Employee Dies in Fall Through Scaffolding
• Employee Killed By Falling Scaffold

A partial list of the most common scaffolding hazards includes:

• Planks and platforms missing, broken, containing holes and/or not properly anchored
• Ice, water, grease, or other substances on planks or platforms
• Handrails missing or inadequate
• Toe boards not installed properly
• Inadequate footing
• Scaffolding not tied off properly
• Broken or damaged pieces of scaffolding
• Electrical hazards.

A scaffolding competent person should be directly involved in the supervision of the scaffold erection, moving, and dismantling, and should be conducting ongoing inspections of all scaffolding throughout the project. A qualified person should insure that all employees working on scaffolding have been properly trained to recognize and report potential hazards.

A scaffolding qualified person is required to:

• Design and load scaffolds in accordance with their design
• Train employees working on the scaffolds to recognize the associated hazards and understand procedures to control or minimize those hazards
• Design construction of scaffold components in accordance with the design.

Ongoing training, open communication, regular inspections, and timely hazard correction by well qualified and diligent job site supervisors will ensure compliance with safety standards for scaffolding and, more importantly, an accident-free job site.