With World Day for Safety and Health at Work nearly upon us, we wanted to share the important safety resources that protect people from the health dangers we at VODEX are passionate about safeguarding against.
Read on to learn about the important work health and safety guidelines your business needs to consider when dealing with hazardous substances, airflow, filtration and more besides – along with how you can make your people aware of the important issues, and help them to work safe on a daily basis.
Four key resources for workplace safety
Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) Regulations
COSHH regulations cover the many thing employers need to consider when dealing with dangerous substances in the workplace. They’re particular pertinent if your people work in factory environments where processes give off a lot of chemicals, but can also be incredibly relevant to some types of job you might not expect – like being a baker, nail tech, dentist or welder.
COSHH regulations cover important criteria like:
- Identifying risks in your workplace
- Legal chemical exposure limits
- Sensible safety and control measures
- How to monitor your environment to keep safety levels consistent
- Training tips for your people
- Plus what to do in cases of emergency.
That’s by no means an exhaustive list, and the full regulations can be found in the COSHH regulations on the government HSE website. Or for a more accessible way to understand COSHH for your business, take a look through our blog’s back catalogue. You’ll find it regularly referenced in discussion of important safety subjects – including how to conduct a COSHH assessment to check how compliant your workplace safety currently is.
HSE’s HSG258 guide to controlling airborne contaminants at work
Also known as the “LEV bible,” the HSG258 guide covers anything and everything you would ever need to know about UK regulations for designing, commissioning and testing effective local exhaust ventilation systems. At VODEX it’s something we’re incredibly familiar with, since LEV is the very thing we’re best known for. Which means we’re well placed to offer guidance on all things relating to your specialist LEV system.
Crucially, the LEV bible is helpful for anyone who needs to measure the airflow of their at-source extraction unit; a legal requirement every 14 months. To learn more about how to do this, and how we can help, visit our recent blog ‘What You Need To Know About Measuring Airflow.’
DSEAR Regulations
Where both COSHH and the LEV bible are in some ways concerned with making sure you aren’t breathing in harmful particulates in the workplace, the Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres Regulations on the HSE website are there to make sure chemicals used in your business are used correctly and don’t lead to a fire, explosion or similarly damaging event.
Covering areas like the explosive risk of flammable gases, mists, vapours, combustible dusts, petroleum and more, DSEAR sets minimum requirements and firm precautions to ensure health and safety at work for you and your team, helping you control the risks and minimise the risk of serious incident.
If your team uses any of the substances listed in the guidelines, you should study the regulations to make sure your business is DSEAR compliant.
ATEX and Explosives Regulations
As a subset of DSEAR, HSE also provides extensive guidelines to eliminating or controlling the risks of explosive atmospheres. These are environments with sizeable amounts of combustible gases, vapours, mists or dusts, and ambient temperatures and pressures of –20°C to 40°C and 0.8 to 1.1 bar respectively.
Any workplace where actions create or release flammable vapours or gases should be mindful to have their people work safe with ATEX (two important European Directives for controlling explosive atmospheres) and explosive regulations in mind. Examples of these activities could include vehicle paint spraying, or handling fine organic dusts such as wood or flour. If you think your business might need to consider these guidelines as part of your work health and safety, visit the ATEX page on the HSE website.
How do you raise awareness of health and safety in the workplace?
In the spirit of World Day for Safety and Health at Work, these are the five steps you can consider taking to make workplace safety a key consideration in your company.
- Nominate a health and safety officer: The most suitable, staff member for this role will have the right combination of skills, experience, training and specialist knowledge. They should become the go-to for issues of health and safety at work and the man or woman most responsible for promoting workplace safety
- Evaluate your current work health and safety practices: Are your safety policies a token gesture to appease HSE, or do your people actually know their stuff? This is the time to draw up plans for a centralised system and process flows that enable you to make workplace safety an important part of your company culture.
- Engage your employees: Here you should communicate the benefits of workplace safety as well as the various responsibilities that employees have towards health and safety at work – be it in regular team meetings or through surveys, news bulletins or more besides. Try incentivising your team to give feedback too and they’ll engage with the material all the more readily.
- Make your workplace safe: From prominently displaying your health and safety policies to providing compliant PPE, ensuring your facilities are sized or your headcount and suitably ventilating your workspace, there are many things you can do to help your people work safe.
- Build an e-learning platform: To really be on board with health and safety at work we’d suggest creating an online safety database and promoting it heavily in inductions and regular communications. It’s also wise to build in time for mandatory annual refreshers into your people’s workload to make sure important work health and safety issues don’t get overlooked during their day to day tasks.
Need advice and support on workplace safety?
At VODEX, we built our business to keep people safe from the dangers of potentially harmful dusts and fumes in the workplace. Health and safety at work is at the heart of what we do, so we’re well placed to support you in your efforts to stay HSE safety compliant.
To find out how we can help, get in touch by using our contact form, emailing sales@vodex.co.uk or calling us on +44 (0)1489 899 070. Alternatively, check out the helpful blogs below for further workplace safety pointers.
Further reading
- Conducting a COSHH Assessment
- What You Need To Know About Measuring Airflow
- How to Ensure Healthy Lungs at Work
- The Importance of Extraction Systems in Salons
- Local Exhaust Ventilation Controls Dental Aerosols and Droplets – Proven!
- Five Surprising Workplaces That Need Fume Extraction (and Other Protective Measures)
- Farm Fumes: The Health Risks and Solutions
- HSE Extends Clampdown on Metalworking Safety Measures
