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Posted By Aishling
Any advice on the following:
Pregnancy risk assessment on a laboratory employee - is it sufficient to provide her with the list / categories of chemicals that are harmful to pregnancy bearing in mind that she is qualified in this area
OR
is it necessary to go through each of the MSDS's(approx 300)to see if they contain the relevant risk phrases.
Advice greatly appreciated.
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Posted By Chris Packham
Remember that for a preparation the MSDS only tells you about the constituents. Furthermore, I imagine that the preparation will be used in combination with other chemicals. Thus what may actually be present in the workplace may be very different to what is on the MSDS.
This is a perennial problem as I find people will rely on MSDS for risk assessment when this is not what they are intended for.
Chris
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Posted By David .J. Minnery
Could I suggest that instead of waiting on employees becoming pregnant before assessing risks, not only in pregnancy but also for mothers that are breastfeeding etc, that you proactively assess the risks from the chemicals that you stock and use, to women of childbearing age, pregnant and breastfeeding women [including younger female workers], this should help highlight the risks and assist you to carry out individual risk assessments if and when the time comes.
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Posted By garyh
You certainly need risk assessments (in fact COSHH assessments). You need this to comply with the various regs regardless of pregnancy!
If you haven't done assessments, how do you know if the risk is acceptable / unacceptable / adequately controlled etc?
Also, it would NEVER be acceptable to give someone a list of risk phrases, or even the MSDS and expect them to assess their exposure, in my view.
A competent person should do the assessments (or, if the hazards of the materials are low and exposure minimal, then decide that full assessments do not need doing).
Sorry if I am preaching a bit, but this is really important.
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Posted By Fred Pratley
Presumably you already have Coshh assessments in place, so you already know what the workplace exposure is.
You should then make a list of the chemicals your lady normally works with and check the Risk phrases associated with these items.
If there is anything in these with a significant R phrase (R63 I think) then review your assessment of these items.
You can then take a bit of time to review the other materials you use - and yes all 300.
Fred
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