COSHH and the human touch

Roger Gibbs exposes the three commons myths behind implementing COSHH in the workplace and discovers that while modern technology is important human input is still vital

The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002¹ implement the Chemical Agents Directive 98/24/EC², and lay down specific requirements on company management to assess the risks to the health of employees for each individual work area where materials hazardous to health are being used, irrespective of the number of employees.

The results of these assessments enable employers to make rational, valid and effective decisions about measures necessary to prevent or adequately control the exposure of employees to such hazards, and to identify requirements for other measures and systems specified in the COSHH Regulations, e.g. health surveillance, maintaining engineering controls.

Between 1971 and 2008, the EC Inventory³ had registered approximately 105,000 chemicals – those registered before 1981 were often accompanied by limited data and hazard information. More information had to be provided for new chemicals placed on the market after 1981. Improving this situation is one of the aims of the REACH Regulation⁴.

To comply with REACH, chemical manufacturers in, and importers into, Europe are required to register their products with the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) in Helsinki, providing hazard classification supported by test data, safety and physical information and exposure scenarios. This process began in 2010 and will continue until 2018 for chemicals already on the market. Registration of new chemicals must be completed before they are placed on the market.

REACH also requires manufacturers and importers to carry out assessments and produce Exposure Scenarios for the uses of the chemical that have been identified and registered. This additional safety information is to be published and communicated in the form of extended Safety Data Sheets.

These Safety Data Sheets are usually the first place to look for information about hazards associated with a given material. Some caution, however, may be needed as many Safety Data Sheets fall short of the basic requirements for hazard classification and guidance on exposure controls as well as being non-compliant with Annex II of the REACH Regulation and the Classification, Labelling and Packaging Regulation (CLP)⁵.

Realising that the COSHH Regulations mentioned above would take some time to be understood and implemented across industry, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) published a simplified guidance procedure in 1998, COSHH Essentials (HSG193)⁶, which is now available online. This in no way replaces the requirements made under the COSHH Regulations, but focuses, through its procedures, more on the fundamental aspects of chemical substances and their use in terms of their characteristics and operational hazards related to them.

A control banding approach is used to categorise hazards to health using Risk Phrases established for classifications under the Chemicals (Hazard Information and Packaging for Supply) Regulations (CHIP)⁷ while looking at how much is being used and for how long and encompassing other factors such as operating temperatures, vapour pressures and dustiness. This information is evaluated in order to select the appropriate level of control needed and links directly to the HSE's Control Guidance Sheets⁸ for possible methods of providing exposure controls.

Myth 1: Computers can do your COSHH assessments for you

In recent times, certain software packages have come onto the market with claims that they can provide COSHH Assessment Sheets based solely on information from the Safety Data Sheet. Such claims seriously misrepresent and undermine the work that really needs to be done.

Clearly, experience teaches us that arbitrarily entering hazard information for a material taken from a Safety Data Sheet into a computer-generated COSHH assessment program is unlikely to produce the right risk indicators and specification of suitable control measures. This can lead to installation of 'over-the-top' protective controls that may prove very expensive to implement and may also increase production costs. On the other hand inadequate controls may expose employees to serious hazards resulting in ill-health or worse.

Consider, for example, a hazardous chemical that is used in various processes in a factory, each process, possibly, with a different manner of application. Or the same process may be carried out in process units that have different systems for containment or air extraction. Moreover, a computer program would need to identify any hazardous products created as a result of chemical reactions within specific processes and factor these in to the risk assessment. In each case, the COSHH Risk Assessment results depend not only on the product being used but what other materials it used, in addition to the manner of use. It is clearly unreasonable to expect that any software could be written to safely and automatically accommodate all the variations.

Myth 2: COSHH assessment is complicated and needs an expert

The HSE's COSHH Essentials demonstrates that someone who has enough knowledge of the work activity in which a hazardous material is used, and can competently extract the required information from a Safety Data Sheet can undertake a COSHH assessment on many simple and common processes. This step leads to identification of a suitable level of control.

It should be noted that whilst the COSHH Essentials, or similar technique, may be applicable to simple or common processes such as many cleaning tasks, or loading a hopper with material for example, specialist advice may be needed for materials, hazards and processes that fall outside this simple approach. It is at this stage that expert assistance may be needed if specialist or high-level control measures are required. Nevertheless, initial use of the simple approach enables the health and safety manager to limit specialist input to those situations that require it instead of the whole range of chemicals and activities.

Myth 3: My workforce won't understand the COSHH assessment

The COSHH Regulations require an employer to inform his employees about substances hazardous to health, the risks associated with using them and what measures are necessary for protection. The means to convey this information is left to the employer, but it is almost universally accepted that Safety Data Sheets are not the appropriate medium for most people due to their complexity and size⁹.

After an assessment and once protective control measures have been assigned, the degree of hazard presented by any particular material in addition to what preventative or protective measures are required, need to be written in an understandable way for the non-expert employee or contractor. A good starting point would be to use basic statements that satisfy the following questions: Could this harm me? – How bad could it be? – What should I do, or not do, to protect myself?

Simple graphics, alongside any text, can also be a powerful aid to convey the degree of hazard and what is needed for effective protection to employees. Careful use of pictograms and symbols can assist in the rapid assimilation of important detail as may be required in an emergency situation for example. Graphics can also play an important role when linguistic difficulties are encountered but graphics should not be uniquely relied on and, wherever possible, concise explanatory text should also be used in the applicable mother tongue.

One aid to enable employees to grasp the degree of hazard of a particular chemical and understand what protective measures are needed is the Workplace Action Safety

Protection Sheet (WASPS) from Environmental Science Ltd. This computer-formatted page strikes a balance between text and graphics and can be used to swap-in different languages.

It should be remembered though that such devices, although useful, do not replace the Safety Data Sheet and serve only to communicate and assist the understanding by non-experts of hazards and what protective measures may be needed.

To make a valid, appropriate and effective COSHH assessment, it is necessary to:

1. Obtain information about the exact way in which a chemical is being used (or is planned to be used), preferably by observation and talking to the people involved, and who may be affected.

2. Use an up-to-date and legislatively compliant Safety Data Sheet to determine the hazards and other properties associated with the material.

3. Check that any protective control measures already in place are being used correctly and are in good working order.

4. If adequate, use COSHH Essentials or a similar approach to determine if the control measures in place are appropriate. If such an approach is not adequate, a more rigorous assessment will need to be carried out in accordance with the Regulations.

5. Determine if any Workplace Exposure Limits¹⁰ apply and consider air monitoring in the work area to check that the controls are, indeed, effective.

Computers, software and IT systems have a place in management of chemicals in the workplace for keeping records, flagging-up review dates, enabling access to information, etc. but assessing risks to the health of the workforce requires activity-specific information and knowledge that can only be recognised and selected by a human being.

References:

1. The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 SI 2002/2667 (As amended by SI 2003/978, SI 2004/3386)
2. Directive 98/24/EC on the protection of the health and safety of workers from the risks related to chemical agents at work
3. EC Inventory (EINECS, ELINCS and NLP) http://esis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/
4. Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals Regulation, (EC) No 1907/2006
5. Classification, Labelling and Packaging Substances and Mixtures Regulation, (EC) No 1272/2008
6. COSHH Essentials: http://www.hse.gov.uk/coshh/essentials/index.htm
7. Chemicals (Hazard Information and Packaging for Supply) Regulations 2009 (CHIP 4) SI 2009/716
8. HSE's Control Guidance Sheets http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/guidance/
9. Source: HSE’s 3Rs Programme, ‘End Stage Review: Stages 1-3’, a paper by Marion Evans and Shelagh Molloy
10. EH40/2005 Workplace exposure limits: Containing the list of workplace exposure limits for use with the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 (as amended) HSE Books 2005

Contact: Roger Gibbs t: 01223 392371 f: 01223 423373 e: roger.gibbs@cambridgeconsultants.com w: www.cambridgeconsultants.com