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Posted By Jonathan Vitta
Afternoon folks
In the context of COSHH assessment, Is there a requirement to assess every substance on site
regardless of prior knowledge of no specific hazards arising from the substances
you are using, from MSDS's EH40 etc. I don't want to go through 100's of assessments
if there is no reason for it.
thanks
Jonathan
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Posted By J Knight
Hi Jonathon,
It's Substances Hazardous to Health, no hazard, no assessment. I've never asked anybody to do a COSHH assessment for Fairy Liquid (other detergents are available) and none of inspectors from any the statutory bodies that vist our premises has ever questioned that,
JOhn
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Posted By AJM
Here is an interesting one from my own experience. When did a full audit of all chemicals and associated Data sheets at my last company, I identfied a couple that were classed as non hazardous originally were irritant when i cross checked and got them updated, I also went into it that much when cross referencing with the EH40 that some exposure limits were not even mentioned on the sheets so i had to pull the suplier up on that too. So that is something to remember and an audit of all chemicals at set intervals can do no harm and is always prudent.
Alan
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Posted By Keith E
Another way would be to group the chemicals/products together e.g. paints tend to be the same base material, just the colour pigments change etc
or
make assessments based around the task, which could encompass 3,4, 5 ?? substances all at once. Again this would reduce the number of assessments.
If you assess all 100 substances you are likely to arrive at common control methods anyway e.g. containment, engineering controls etc
How long has CoSHH been around? and people are still doing large numbers of assessments on a substance by substance basis - there is often no need for it.
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Posted By J Knight
Hi AJM,
What you say is true, and a salutory lesson, especially as COSHH imposes a duty of care even in cases where emploters had every reason to believe that a substance was safe to use in the method chosen. However, I stand by my original point; no hazard, no assessment. If you don't know of any hazard, how can you assess anyway? If you know of a hazard that's not on an MSDS (if, for example, the substance has no MSDFS because it's human body waste, or cold water (thanks to Chris Packham for this particular problem) or as in your case the MSDS is wrong) then assess despite the MSDS,
John
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Posted By Jonathan Vitta
Thanks for your responses, we are now looking at task based risk assessments,
and the thought of completing RA's for all our raw materials was quite daunting
as well as time consuming.
regards
Jonathan
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Posted By Mark Mace
Keith E,
you may well ask why coshh has been about so long and still people are doing large numbers of assessments, two probable reasons spring to mind
1. The assessments have never been carried out by the company or a previous health and safety rep.
2. A new H&S person may want piece of mind in doing it themselves.
regards
MAM
PS , i am about to do my companies assessments because even though the legislation has been around for years, it was never carried out by the company previously and i am new to this.
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