Posted By Emma Forbes
I'm just completing the remainder of my COSHH assessments after spending months on them - I've just discovered that I really don't enjoy doing them!! Does anyone else find this with COSHH or am I the only one....?!!

Posted By Allan St.John Holt
True they are a pain, but I somehow feel that they can be really beneficial - more so than 'straight' assessments - when properly done and used e.g. for training purposes. I don't know why that should be. I've always been concerned that we play down the OH risks in comparison with the more overtly 'safety' issues. They don't fir into most numerical risk scoring systems either.

Allan

Posted By Hilary Charlton
Yes, agree, probably the very most boring task in health and safety, ranks alongside watching paint dry. However, the joy of this is that it can all be done again for the Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres Regulations - oh hooray I hear you cry ....

Posted By Diane Thomason
I'm a specialist in biological and chemical safety. I think sometimes the COSHH exercise can be devalued by the routine nature of Doing A Risk Assessment. If it becomes a routine chore - and even worse a "file-and-forget" form filling exercise - the whole thing is dragged into disrepute!

COSHH assessment can be made much easier by having a strategy. Many people/organisations stick doggedly with the one chemical / one COSHH form method and that's just not necessary. You can do generic COSHH assessments - do one assessment for a group of chemicals with similar properties - saves loads of time and paper! You can do process risk assessments - assess your use of all the substances used in a process - both quicker and more valuable than looking at each chemical individually.

Commercial preparations and mixtures - you do not have to do a COSHH assessment for each component of the mixture, as is sometimes thought. Potential exposure is to the mixture as it is, and the MSDS for the preparation should give you the info you need.

We always advise our departments to make COSHH assessment a team responsibility, and get the team to either carry out assessments as a group or share out the workload between a number of individuals.

Gavin, why review them all after 12 months? 2 years should be enough in many cases, unless the processes etc. change very frequently (in which case why not make the assessments more flexible?)

I don't mean to teach Granny to suck eggs - most of you are I'm sure aware of these issues, but I just thought I'd point out some of the pitfalls for those who may not have much experience in this area.

Hope this helps

Diane

Posted By Emma Forbes
Lawrence,

I'm sure your assistant won't notice another couple of hundred on her list then eh..........I'll buy you a pint.......!

Posted By Merv Newman
Back from a week in Provence, I'm just running through the fun stuff.

I did like the comment that laser RAs are on the "cutting edge".

I have always tried (not always sucessfully) to organise a safety working group to do/assist COSHH risk assessements. My groups (for any HSE subject) always include a cross section of the site - managers, supervisors, workers, admin and production, with union reps included. (usually the senior person should "chair" the group, the safety person being there to train, advise and audit)

The educational effort to get such a group up and running is high, as is the effort to "sell" such a group to management, (and they need at least a tea and biscuit budget) Quality control is essential.

The long term benefits are high - especially with senior management participation and recognition of a job well done. Buy-in, commitment, participation in important safety efforts, diffusion of knowledge ... And you palm off a lot of the drudge stuff to someone else.

Do it right, do it often enough for as many different parts of safety as you can - and you company won't need their HSE specialist any more. Isn't that a thought.

Am I being too whimsical ?

Merv Newman

Posted By Jane Blunt
The last respondent has touched on one of the fundamental difficulties with chemicals. It is not so much the inconsistency between manufacturers MSDS's but of interpretation and understanding the scale of things.

To give you an example:

MSDS for sodium chloride (common salt, the stuff you put on your chips) states that in a spill you should 'wear respirator, chemical safety goggles, rubber boots and heavy rubber gloves'. What happened to taking a pinch of it and throwing it over your shoulder?

It is of course all a matter of scale. You know that you can drop 20 kg or more of salt and scoop it up carefully without protective clothing - but a lorry load would be a lot more dangerous. The MSDS instructions relate to the lorry load.

A person with hands-on chemical experience can normally give you some idea of scale and the relative importance of the instructions in relation to what you are doing. He or she will probably know from their own experience what the real problems are and where the real dangers lie. There are some selected chemicals that you really don't want to come into contact with on ANY scale, but these are in the minority.

Jane

Posted By Steve Holliday
I have a better example of unclear MSDS than even Janes salt.

In a previous job a MSDS was recieved for water (used as a laboratory reagent) that stated it was fatal if ingested!!!
What it failed to mention was that numerous pints (far more than was contained in a number of the supplied containers) consummed in rapid succession was needed to cause this fatality.

Needless to say the well meaning Union Rep tried to have it banned immediately