Employers have a duty of care to their workers and are obliged to provide a safe working environment. In the hard-hat industry, a safety manager is usually tasked with the job of ensuring safety on-site. If you are in the UK, one of the first questions asked is how to make the workplace safe in accordance with COSHH, which stands for ‘Control of Substances Hazardous to Health’ and falls under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations that were implemented in 2002. This UK regulation requires employers to control substances that are hazardous to health and this is a crucial part of any company’s safety preparedness.
A safety manager’s job is wide ranging and preparing for COSHH is only one aspect of their duties. There are many dangers that must be safeguarded against as injuries due to contact with a dangerous substance are just one of a plethora of causes of non-fatal workplace injuries. According to the Health Service Executive (HSE), the most common causes of these injuries in the UK are:
- Handling, lifting or carrying
- Slips, trips, and falls
- Falls from a height
- Struck by a moving object
- Contact with moving machinery
- Violence/Physical assault
- Striking against something fixed or stationery
- Exposure to hazardous substances
- Struck by a moving vehicle
What are some of the hazardous substances covered by COSHH:
In heavy industry, workers are especially at risk of injury from hazardous substances as chemicals are often used in potentially hazardous processes. In coal mining for example, polymeric chemicals are used in the flocculation process in coal mining to treat waste water by making particles clump together and float to the top, making them easier to be removed. The important word to remember is ‘potentially’ as workers are only at risk if the right procedures to ensure their safety are not taken.
The aim of COSHH is to provide a regulatory framework for how to deal with these risks. COSHH is a law and it is your duty to ensure compliance and to keep your workers safe by preparing accordingly and including details about COSHH in online safety training. The substances covered by the regulation are:
- Chemicals
- Fumes
- Dusts
- Vapours
- Mists
- Nanotechnology
- Gases
- Asphyxiating gases
- Biological agents
How to keep your workers safe?
You will be tasked to do a COSHH assessment to assess your company’s preparedness. Best practice for keeping your workers safe in regards t COSHH is to follow the eight principles laid out by the HSE:
- Design and operate processes and activities to minimise emission, release and spread of substances hazardous to health.
- Take into account all relevant routes of exposure – inhalation, skin absorption and ingestion – when developing control measures.
- Control exposure by measures that are proportionate to the health risk.
- Choose the most effective and reliable control options which minimise the escape and spread of substances hazardous to health.
- Where adequate control of exposure cannot be achieved by other means, provide, in combination with other control measures, suitable personal protective equipment.
- Check and review regularly all elements of control measures for their continuing effectiveness.
- Inform and train all employees on the hazards and risks from the substances with which they work and the use of control measures developed to minimise the risks.
- Ensure that the introduction of control measures does not increase the overall risk to health and safety.
Make COSHH part of your Orientations:
While your first step should be to make your workplace as physically and environmentally safe, just as important is promoting safe working practice within your workforce. Eliminating hazards is the ideal way to keep workers safe because it eliminates the risk. However, if you are managing a construction site or a mine for example, there are certain hazards that are inevitably going to be present. You should put in the adequate control measures but just having controls is not enough by itself.
Focus on point seven in the eight principles of dealing with COSHH, “inform and train all employees on the hazards and risks”. You should take the steps yourself to put control measures in place but you must also ensure every worker is aware of these measures and how they fit into the overall scheme. Include this information in worker’s orientations when they onboarded. This is so important that you want a worker to have this information before they step foot on-site.
Protective Personal Equipment (PPE):
PPE falls under the control measures category but is one of the weaker controls so should be relied upon when other measures aren’t appropriate. PPE should certainly not be the only control because it has too many potential faults:
- It has to be selected for the individual;
- It has to fit the individual and not interfere with their work or other PPE worn at the same time;
- It has to be put on correctly every time it is worn;
- It has to remain properly fitted all the time the individual is exposed;
- It has to be properly stored, checked and maintained;
- It tends to be delicate and relatively easily damaged; and
Since PPE can fail as a control measure if it is incorrectly used it is vital that workers receive the adequate training. The correct use of PPE is based around routine and habit so you want to create this habit right at the start of a worker’s tenure. Include information on what PPE to use for what role, when to use it, and how to use it in your online orientation.
GoContractor Product:
GoContractor is the best way to train your workers on COSHH and the correct procedures to follow. The hazardous substances that workers need to be aware of will likely vary from site to site so you should provide orientations that are site-specific. GoContractor’s online platform is easily customizable to allow for training in COSHH that is site and role specific so that workers are adequately protected from the hazards they will encounter.
GoContractor allows you to:
- Save time and reduce costs
- Become leaner and more efficient
- Manage worker and contractor company documents.
- Create custom training courses
- Achieve greater consistency in your training.
- Use Identity Capture to verify your worker’s identity before they step foot on-site
- Get rid of paperwork by moving all training and contractor management online.
- Continuously monitor and track contractors’ safety compliance and behavior using the GoContractor Traffic Light Feature.
- Review dashboard and generate custom reports.
There is no excuse not to train your workers about COSHH in your contractor orientations. GoContractor’s online platform makes it easy to include all the required information on a single online platform. Keeping your workers informed and safe cuts down on accidents which in turn cuts on down on costs and lost time, making a big impact on your bottom line.