HAZARD CONTROL HIERARCHY FOR THE
WORKPLACE HAZARDS - Part 1
There are many hazards exposed by the
employees in the industrial workplace and in other areas, controlling/mitigating
these hazards is very important to safe guard the employees.
The hazard control hierarchy generally
have six major steps to handling all type of hazards.
• Elimination
• Substitution
• Isolation
• Engineering controls
• Administrative controls
• Personal protective equipment
This approach should be applied from
the top down for the effective control on the hazards. Ideally, all hazards
should be completely eliminated but its practically not possible in all time.
If elimination is not possible or practical, and frequently it will not be,
then substitution should be considered, and so forth proceeding down the list.
Elimination is the complete removal of
the hazard. The complete elimination of
a hazard is often not possible, but
when it can be accomplished it has a major impact
on the safety of the operation. For
example - If a process normally requires a flammable solvent and a way to
perform the same work with any solvent is developed, the inherent hazards of
the process are greatly reduced.
LIST OF NFPA CODES & STANDARDS – PART 2
Substitution is when a more hazardous
component of a system is traded for a less
hazardous one. Years ago in the
printing industry, the solvents including toluene, xylene, and methyl ethyl
ketone were commonly used throughout the industry. These solvents pose serious
fire risks and also personnel exposure issues. Now a days it has substituted with
less hazardous solvents such as isopropyl alcohol in many operations. Alcohol
is also flammable but is not as high a risk as the previously used solvents.
GAS CUTTING SET, STAND DRILLING M/C, GENERATOR -
Isolation involves placing the hazard
in a remote or contained area away from other
portions of the operation. The
explosives manufacturing industry, the production areas are separated by
distance and/or blast walls so that an explosion in one area is unlikely to
affect the entire facility.
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