Safety Tidbit 3.32 - Labelled, Tagged, or Marked

Safety Tidbit 3.32 – Labelled, Tagged, or Marked

Reference:      OSHA Hazard Communication Standard

This week our topic is labeling on irregular containers, in this case, plastic pails of materials and very small squirt bottles. The OSHA Hazard Communication standard requires the employer to ensure that each container of hazardous chemicals in the workplace is labeled, tagged or marked with the information specified under paragraphs (f)(1)(i) through (v) of the standard for labels on shipped containers. Namely:

•    Product identifier

•    Signal word

•    Hazard statement(s)

•    Pictogram(s)

•    Precautionary statement(s)

•    Name, address, and telephone number of the chemical manufacturer, importer, or other responsible party.

In one of my cases this week the container was a plastic pail in a dusty environment. The other was small, one and two-ounce squirt bottles. When I walked through the facilities, there was no identification on any of the containers in either location so, hazard identification was easy. However, the employers’ concern was with how to abate the issue. They explained a label wouldn’t stay on the pails and to put all the required information on the small bottles was infeasible.

The answer for both became tagging. The employer must put all the required information on the tag then affix it to the containers. Interestingly, at the facility with the pails, we did find some old containers in the back that had tags already on them (but the information was illegible).

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how small or irregular the container, OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard requires the container to have some form of identification communicating to the user what the contents (and the hazards) are of the material within. Thus, the name of the standard – Hazard Communication.

Hope this was helpful and thanks for reading my Safety Tidbits! Comments and questions are always welcome. ~ Bryan

P.S. If you have an interesting safety or health question please let me know.

Safety Tidbit 3.31 - Pandemic Flu

Safety Tidbit 3.31 – Pandemic Flu

Reference:      OSHA Safety and Health Topics Page - Pandemic Influenza

                        OSHA Safety and Health Topics Page – Seasonal Flu

                        CDC Influenza Seasonal website

I had an interesting phone call from a dentist. He was upset that half of workforce at this dental clinic were out sick with the flu and wondered if I give him advice on how he could prevent this from happening next year.

First, a pandemic is a global disease outbreak. An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus emerges for which there is little or no immunity in the human population; begins to cause serious illness; and then spreads easily person-to-person worldwide. As experienced by our dentist here, a worldwide influenza pandemic could have a major effect on the global economy, including travel, trade, tourism, food, consumption and eventually, investment and financial markets. Ultimately, planning is key. When I was with OSHA we did a lot of disaster planning on how to maintain government operations if a pandemic took place.

Healthcare workers (yes, dental too) in contact with flu exposed patients are at higher risk for exposure to the flu virus and additional precautions are needed. Health and Human Services’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a seasonal webpage with updated guidance for protecting individuals from seasonal flu. 

Get the flu shot! Each year the vaccine is revised to protect against the influenza viruses that research indicates will be most common during the flu season. Although the flu vaccine’s effectiveness varies from year to year, it can be lifesaving for those at increased risk.  The flu vaccine can:

• keep you from getting flu,
• make the flu less severe if you do get it, and
• keep you from spreading flu to your co-workers, family, and other people.

And to quote Benjamin Franklin’s axiom “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This goes for safety and health.

Hope this was helpful and thanks for reading my Safety Tidbits! Comments and questions are always welcome. ~ Bryan

P.S. If you have an interesting safety or health question please let me know.

Safety Tidbit 3.30 - Eating, Drinking, Smoking

Safety Tidbit 3.30 – Eating, Drinking, Smoking

Reference:      Smoking Regulations in Pennsylvania

                        OSHA Regulation on Sanitation – 1910.141            

                        Public Health Statement – Manganese – September 2012

This week I visit a manufacturing company that performed welding. As they had some employee complaints about the smell, they requested air monitoring for a paint operation that they performed at the one end of their huge facility. As I entered the facility, I was hit by the smell of cigarettes. Also, many of the workers had cigarette lit while they were clamping metal pieces into place to be welded. Furthermore, there were water bottles and open drink containers at just about every work station. I thought I had been pushed back into the 1980’s prior to all the work OSHA did on Indoor Air Quality and Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS).

No in the State of the Pennsylvania, The PA Clean Indoor Air Act (CIAA) regulates smoking in public places. Smoking is prohibited in places of employment. The Department of Health is the Commonwealth agency responsible for implementing the law through education and enforcement of the provisions of the CIAA. So, really, no one is able to check what an employer is doing. Ultimately, the new safety manager for this facility wants to ban smoking but knows he is going to meet a lot of resistance. Hopefully, this will help him in his fight. Good Luck!

The second issue I noted above was drinking in the workplace. So, it wasn’t enough that they are welding without any local exhaust ventilation, smoking when they aren’t welding, they want to drink at their work stations, so all the contaminants can be ingested as well. These workers really have a death wish.  Now OSHA states: “Eating and drinking areas. No employee shall be allowed to consume food or beverages in a toilet room nor in any area exposed to a toxic material {emphasis added}. [1910.141(g)(2)]” Furthermore, the same standard defines toxic material as:

Toxic material means a material in concentration or amount which exceeds the applicable limit established by a standard, such as 1910.1000 and 1910.1001 or, in the absence of an applicable standard, which is of such toxicity so as to constitute a recognized hazard that is causing or is likely to cause death or serious physical harm.

Let’s take manganese which is a common component in welding fumes as it is used to improve hardness, stiffness, and strength to steel. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) states the health effects of manganese include behavioral changes and other nervous system effects, which include movements that may become slow and clumsy, referred to as “manganism.” Other less severe nervous system effects such as slowed hand movements have been observed in some workers exposed to lower concentrations in the work place. Ultimately, I think you will agree that welding fumes are a toxic material. I wish the safety manager good luck in his cultural battle. Interestingly, OSHA inspected them just a few months ago and mentioned nothing. They were only worried about the hearing conservation program.

Hope this was helpful and thanks for reading my Safety Tidbits! Comments and questions are always welcome. ~ Bryan

P.S. If you have an interesting safety or health question please let me know.

Safety Tidbit 3.29 - GHS and FDA

Safety Tidbit 3.29 – GHS and FDA

Reference:      OSHA Hazard Communication Standard

                        Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act

                       

A company blends various dyes to create custom colored plastic pellets for resale to injection molding clients. When I walked into their mixing and quality control area I noticed a bunch of bottles with hand-typed (meaning very old) labels. I told them that each of the containers needs to get labeled in accordance with the 2012 Hazard Communication standard. Furthermore, during my tour of the facility we stopped at the three-drawer filing cabinet which housed the hundreds of material safety data sheets. I told them that the MSDS has been replaced with a more robust and informative Safety Data Sheet and that their cabinet needed to be updated. The client’s first comment was that they were exempt from OSHA due to FDA.

This exemption made me pause as I didn’t really think the circumstance feel under the OSHA’s exemption but told them I would check further. 1910.1200(b)(5)(iii) reads:

Any food, food additive, color additive, drug, cosmetic, or medical or veterinary device or product, including materials intended for use as ingredients in such products (e.g. flavors and fragrances), as such terms are defined in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 301 et seq.) or the Virus-Serum-Toxin Act of 1913 (21 U.S.C. 151 et seq.), and regulations issued under those Acts, when they are subject to the labeling requirements under those Acts by either the Food and Drug Administration or the Department of Agriculture

21 U. S. Code 321(t) states:

(1) The term “color additive” means a material which—

(A) is a dye, pigment, or other substance made by a process of synthesis or similar artifice, or extracted, isolated, or otherwise derived, with or without intermediate or final change of identity, from a vegetable, animal, mineral, or other source, and

(B) when added or applied to a food, drug, or cosmetic, or to the human body or any part thereof, is capable (alone or through reaction with other substance) of imparting color thereto

While the chemicals used are dyes, they are not being used in the manufacture of foods, drugs, or cosmetics or medical or veterinary devices. This company was manufacturing plastic pellets for resale to injection molding companies and when asked who were their primary clients? They responded, companies primarily making flower pots for ultimate resale at home improvement centers (e.g., Lowes, Home Depot).

Hope this was helpful and thanks for reading my Safety Tidbits! Comments and questions are always welcome. ~ Bryan

P.S. If you have an interesting safety or health question please let me know.

Safety Tidbit 3.28 – Fall Protection on Truck Trailers - Clarification

Safety Tidbit 3.28 – Fall Protection on Truck Trailers - Clarification

Reference:       1910.28 – OSHA Walking Working Surfaces

                        OSHA 2007 Letter of Interpretation

                        OSHA 1996 Letter to Regional Administrators

                        Federal Register Volume 81, No. 223/Friday, November 18, 2016, pp. 82505-82509

This Safety Tidbit is a follow-on to Tidbit #3.26 from a couple of weeks ago on a discussion about the new walking-working surfaces standard. I said the class members and instructor could not find a letter of interpretation pertinent to walk-working surfaces. However, if we would have looked under 1910.132, we would have found one. This is complements of a friend in DC.

All that I said before was correct. OSHA’s definition is Walking-working surface means any horizontal or vertical surface on or through which an employee walks, works, or gains access to a work area or workplace location. The top of a semi-truck bed seems to fit that definition. Thus, the discussion began since some folks have trucks that move supplies from a warehouse to a job site.

As I noted, we could not find a letter of interpretation on the topic however, there was a letter under 1910.132(d). The 1996 RA letter states: “The current fall protection standard in general industry (Subpart D) does not specifically address fall hazards from the tops of rolling stock. The new proposed fall protection standard, 55 Fed. Reg. 13360, explicitly excludes rolling stock from coverage. The enforcement policy of the Agency, consequently, is that falls from rolling stock also will not be cited under Subpart D.” So OSHA will not cite the fall hazard under the proper standard and force us to look somewhere else.

In the next paragraph is says: “… it would not be appropriate to use the personal protection equipment standard, 29 CFR 1910.132(d), to cite exposure to fall hazards from the tops of rolling stock, unless employees are working atop stock that is positioned inside of or contiguous to a building or other structure where the installation of fall protection is feasible. In such cases, fall protection systems often can be and, in fact, are used in many facilities in the industry.”  Therefore, OSHA will cite under the failure of the employer to assess their workplace for hazards.

Digging deeper into the new Rule. There is a discussion on rolling stock in the final rule on walking-working surfaces. Interestingly, OSHA makes a good case that workers should be protected from fall off. Page 82508 of the Federal Register OSHA sums up their findings by stating: “OSHA believes the evidence employers and industry associations submitted shows it is technologically feasible in many cases for employers to provide fall protection for rolling stock and motor vehicles regardless of their location.”

Unfortunately, OSHA waffled in the final paragraph of the rolling stock discussion. Page 82509 of the discussion specifically about jurisdiction: “FMCSA addresses fall hazards for certain commercial motor vehicles in 49 CFR part 399. Since the Agency did not propose any specific fall protection requirements for rolling stock or motor vehicles, OSHA has not included any in this final rule. However, it will continue to consider the comments it has received, and in the future the Agency may determine whether it is appropriate to pursue any action on this issue.” With this omission, OSHA keeps the 1996 Enforcement Directive to the Regional Administrators viable.

Therefore, my take home message has not really changed. If you have trucks that move supplies from a warehouse or other storage location, that falls under General Industry standards, and the workers working on/from the trucks are 4 feet or more above the ground, they must be protected from falling if feasible to do so. However, you will need to be prepared to defend your position of why protecting your workers was infeasible and this is increasingly difficult to do given the innovations in fall protection systems.

Hope this was helpful and thanks for reading my Safety Tidbits! Comments and questions are always welcome. ~ Bryan

P.S. If you have an interesting safety or health question please let me know.