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Posted By Anthony Brearley
My company merrily ticks along until something happens, and then the management react.
We work with cobalt and run a health screening program, however this time we've had a few bad results on the shop floor. The boss has decided that the probably cause is drinking on the shop floor. I can see that this would be a cause, but some of the workers (myself included) are a bit put out by being limited to effectively only three drinks during the working day.
I know that it's a cause of contamination, but it gets fairly warm (not excessively hot) in the works and with it being a dusty environment, should drinks (either water or hot drinks) be more readily available?
What I'm trying to work out is can my boss limit drinking to specific times given a dry and (potentially harmful) dusty environment?
One worker actually came up with a point that cobalt is 'washed' out of the human body, so providing less drinks actually reduces the amount of water available to flush the cobalt out in the first place?
Thanks in advance for some hopefully useful answers?
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Posted By Paul Leadbetter
Anthony
I don't think that drinks should be limited, especially as you say that it gets fairly warm on the shopfloor. However, if your processes are liberating cobalt dust, employees should not be drinking on the shopfloor at all.
Have you carried out any air monitoring to determine personal exposures; do these tally with the high biological monitoring results? Air monitoring will only tell you something about inhalation exposures whereas the biological monitoring will tell you about absorption through all routes of exposure.
Paul
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Posted By Adam Worth
Our site operates under the carcinogen ACOP. Placing anything in your mouth on site is strictly prohibited - this runs to not being able to use a bite piece for Entonox administering.
Drinking of water, eating and smoking are therefor big NOs on site.
we have clean areas - namely mess rooms and the control rooms where people can go to drink water and contamination is controlled.
As said above it's down to occ hygiene monitoring and risk assessement but can you not do as we do, limit drinking on the shop floor and allow more frequent breaks?
It's all down to behavioral safety and culture at the end of the day - be careful as you may just send drinking underground and it may be harder to monitor exposure.
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Rank: Guest
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Posted By Anthony Brearley
We 'used' to permit drinking in the works, well, it wasn't supposed to be done but the works manager doesn't consider health and safety as part of his job, so he didn't stop it.
Our most recent medical screening showed some people were high, one of which has never drank in the works. So the boss said that there was nothing wrong with the extractors and that drinking was the main cause, but logically if someone doesn't drink then that can't be the cause for that person?
I happen to work in a clean area and yet I'm still not permitted to drink between breaks. I'm clean, my area is clean, I've never had a high test result for cobalt exposure, my lungs are poor but I'm asthmatic.
I already pointed out the Workplace regs stipulate a supply of water readily available and the boss simply said that it's readily available at break times as set by the works clock!
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Posted By Adam Worth
hmmm
"We 'used' to permit drinking in the works, well, it wasn't supposed to be done but the works manager doesn't consider health and safety as part of his job, so he didn't stop it."
SECTION 7 HSAWA! Health and Safety is everyone's job!
The rest of the problem is more complicated. I'm no expert on occ hygiene or cobalt exposure. But I think you should seek further advice.
The problem with Chemicals with associated health risks is that their control can clash with other regs. This is something that needs to be carefully considered and the controls need to be balanced to control risks in a sensible way.
I still see no reason why it's not reasonably practicable for you to move to a clean area to drink water!
I'll do some research and maybe come back with a better answer.
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