Posted By Adrian Watson Dear All, Would those people who have used COSHH Essentials and got a point of view on its usefulness or not, give me some feedback on it for a presentation. Regards Adrian Watson

Posted By David Bannister Adrian, I have used it when carrying out assessments at an engineering company on a range of substances including paints and thinners, lubricants and a couple of industry standard aerosol sprays. I was surprised at the control regimes it suggested - mostly total enclosures - which were neither practicable nor reasonable, in my opinion. I have also used it when considering use of herbicides and fungicides by gardening staff. Again the controls suggested were total enclosure. Admittedly nasty products but hardly needing total enclosure. Since then I've given up and used my own opinions supplemented by other info sources. Other people with whom I have discussed this seem to agree that the suggested controls are at least one tier too high.

Posted By Nick Higginson Adrian Very useful for small businesses, but as stated the controls can be a little over the top. Kind regards Nick

Posted By Pete48 Adrian, I used it about 7 years ago with regard to a multi-site business with no obvious COSHH nasties but with a need to make checks as quickly as possible and with no on site "safety" staff. It was very useful for getting local tech staff to pitch in and get the initial surveys done. It gave an easy to follow formulaic approach that also demystified the world of risk phrases and chemistry adequately to give them the confidence to tackle COSHH issues. The surveys found some surprises that we needed to follow up with more technical assessment and confirmed lots of routine stuff without the usual "amateur" spread of COSHH assessments done without a system. I agree that it is often not enough on its own and results do need to be reviewed by someone with adequate and relevant knowledge to avoid OTT solutions. But that means it does fail safe in the sense that it would not allow an area to be overlooked or under assessed by those with little knowledge. It was a very useful tool for me at that time.

Posted By Adrian Watson Dear All, Very interesting comments which are generally similar to my views. However, I have some additional comments about COSHH essentials; These are COSHH essentials: 1. Does not clearly state the assumptions and its technical parameters. 2. Does not have regard to substances produced by the process. 3. Does not clearly inform the user to get expert advice if large volumes of hazardous substances or if carcinogens, mutagens, reproductive toxins etc are used or produced in or by the process. 4. Does not make it clear that air and biological monitoring are required after implementation of control measures to ensure that they are effective. Whilst I think that COSHH essentials is a very dumbed down assessment it does serve a useful function in that it gets information to small users. I believe that COSHH essentials could be improved by: 1. Making it clear that COSHH Essentials is part of the plan, do, check, act cycle. 2. Making the guidance clearer so that the user knows the technical limitations of COSHH Essentials. 3. Putting the supporting technical literature on the web site. 4. Restricting the option for users to enter large volumes of substances. 5. Restricting the risk output for carcinogens etc to "SEEK EXPERT ADVICE FROM AN OCCUPATIONAL HYGIENIST." Regards Adrian Watson

Posted By Richard Chalkley I have tried out COSHH Essentials a few times and find its use to be limited. It is of little use in a laboratory / research environment as the technical demands of the assessments to be performed are too high. COSHH essentials also takes no account of the scale being worked on (as noted by a previous post). This result in OTT containment being recommended for a toxic substance when the total quantity in use is thousands, if not millions of times less than the amount which could cause harm. In this environment (Universities / Biotech / Pharmaceutical Research) COSHH Essentials cannot be used. While it would be good to have a universal tool, its limitations should be more clearly stated. In the environment that I work, there is no substitute for a competent individual. in this case that means a science degree first followed by the relevant safety qualification. Richard.