How Do You Identify Hazards? Here are Six Things You Can Do
How Do You Identify the Hazards?
Here are the six things or ideas you can do.
If you need to prevent accidents from occurring, you have to know how to identify or classify workplace hazards. The hazard is something that has the potential to harm you or can affect your employee’s safety or health.
Workplace hazards have many roots or sources, but they are not the infinite, and you can control if you can identify or know them and determine how they can harm or affect your employees.
Sources of hazards include tools & equipment, materials, processes, energy, substances, conditions, and the work practices.
Here are the six things or ideas you can do to identify or name the hazards and make your workplace or permisses safer:
Conduct the baseline hazard survey.
A baseline survey is a thorough or careful evaluation of your entire site — work processes, facilities and equipment — that identifies safety or the health hazards. A complete survey or study will tell you what the hazards are, how severe they could be & where they are, and
Do a job-hazard analysis.
A job-hazard analysis (JHA) is a method or process of identifying, assessing, & controlling the hazards associated or linked with the specific jobs.
A JHA breaks down a job into the tasks. You evaluate each task to identify any hazards in the workplace and then determine how each hazard at work will be controlled.
JHAs work well for jobs with the hazards that are difficult or hard to eliminate, and for jobs with a history of the accidents or the near misses.
JHAs for complex jobs can take a considerable or significant amount of time and the expertise to develop.
Involving the employees performing or doing the jobs throughout the JHA process or procedure can provide you with the better understanding of the different ways or means, each task is accomplished or performed, and it can help you to implement any need for change.
Use safety data sheets to identify chemical hazards.
Your employees must be able to understand or guess and use the safety data sheets (SDSs). An SDS has detailed information about the hazardous chemical’s health impacts, its physical and chemical properties, and safe practices for the handling.
You must prepare an index list of the hazardous chemicals and have a current SDS for each hazardous or dangerous chemical used at your workplace.
If your employees manage hazardous chemicals or chemical products, you will also require developing the written hazard communication plan or procedure that identifies the chemicals & describes how your employees are notified of the chemical hazards.
Look for the New Hazards Whenever You replace equipment, materials, or the work processes.
Determine what the hazards could result from the changes and how to eliminate or control the hazards. If you work at various sites, you may need to do the hazard assessment at each site.
Investigate the Accidents and Near-Miss Incidents to Discover Root Causes.
Most of the accidents are preventable. Each hazard has a root cause — inadequate supervision, inadequate training, and soft safety policies are examples. Develop a procedure that defines who will do the investigation and assures the investigation will be thorough and the accurate.
One of the ways to investigate the near misses is to have the “no-fault” incident reporting system or procedure:
Employees just fill out a simple incident report form that then describes the incident and how it happened. Investigate the incident as if it were the accident and that tell your employees what you will do to prevent or stop it from happening again.
Do Regular Workplace Inspections
Regular inspections help you decide if you have eliminated or controlled the existing hazards and can identify the new hazards. In fact, all the work sites – including the equipment and the work processes – must be inspected by the qualified or competent person as often as necessary to keep the employees safe at the workplace or permisses.
Quarterly inspections by the employees trained in the hazard recognition are the good way to get the job done.
If your business or profession has a safety committee, then the committee must place procedures for the conducting safety and the health inspections. People trained in hazard identification must conduct inspections at least quarterly – and as often as necessary at the mobile locations.
