How to assess workplace health and safety risks

Ensuring workplace health and safety is essential for any organization, as risks can lead to serious injuries, financial losses, and reputational damage.

This article explores practical strategies for assessing and managing these risks, helping employers create safer environments and employees feel secure.

From thorough risk assessments to proactive safety measures, we provide insights and best practices to enhance workplace safety and protect everyone's well-being.

Identifying Health Hazards

Identifying the hazards present in the workplace is not just a to-do list step but should be the foundational pillar of a proactive health and safety program.

You can categorize health hazards into the following four groups:

1. Chemical. Examples include exposure to corrosives, glue fumes, and asphyxiants.
2. Physical. Examples include thermal stress and noise.
3. Biological. Examples include mold, bacteria, and pathogen exposure.  
4. Ergonomic. Examples include awkward postures, repetitive motions, and heavy exertion.

As a first step, reviewing previous incident and injury data and available near-miss reports can help you understand past hazards and root causes. Look out for patterns in injury type, source, or conditions.

Next, walk-arounds are critical to understanding actual rather than ideal operations. Conduct thorough inspections of all work areas and observe personnel in action. Consider short-term exposures and how conditions may change throughout the day or seasonally throughout the year.

A team approach is beneficial and essential to thoroughly understanding working conditions and practices. Be sure to include management, operations, maintenance, and line-level staff. Interview the team participants and other personnel to understand any rare events and emergency conditions that may not be easily visible.

Determine Associated Risk

Once you have identified the existing hazards, the next step is determining the severity and likelihood of incidents related to each hazard.

Severity – The degree of harm associated with a risk. Outcomes can range from minor (e.g., throat irritation) to untreatable (e.g., death). The severity of a hazard cannot be reduced.

Likelihood - The probability of a negative outcome due to a hazard. Is it a frequent or a rare event?

Both severity and likelihood are taken into account to prioritize corrective actions, considering existing precautions and their effectiveness:

Control Hazards

Work to reduce the likelihood of injury by implementing controls according to the hierarchy of controls.

Although removal of the hazard is preferred, it is often impractical and, therefore, only sometimes possible. For some hazards, regulations may not allow administrative controls.

Record Assessment Findings

It's essential to consider the opinion of many health and safety regulators: 'If it's not documented, it wasn't done.'

Documenting the risk assessment and any implemented controls is a formality and a crucial step in ensuring compliance and maintaining a secure workplace environment.

Review Controls and Newly Introduced Hazards

It’s important to realize that some controls can be ineffective. Once implemented, reevaluate your controls to ensure that the method reduces the likelihood of injury to an acceptable level.

Previously adequate controls can only succeed if appropriately maintained. Periodically review hazard controls to ensure functionality.

Changes in processes, equipment, and materials can introduce new hazards to the workplace. Implementing a process of reviewing changes in the workplace to ensure any newly introduced hazards are appropriately controlled is a commitment to continuous improvement.

Maintaining this attitude and minimizing all existing facility health and safety hazards is not just a task but a motivation to keep the workplace safe and healthy.

Developing and maintaining an IH sampling plan

An industrial hygiene (IH) sampling plan involves a systematic approach to identifying and quantifying employee exposures and assessing the adequacy of existing controls to prevent injury or illness. The process begins with conducting a comprehensive risk assessment to understand the health and safety risks at the site and among the exposed populations.

Each IH sampling plan should be population-based, identifying and categorizing Similarly Exposed Groups (SEGs). Determining SEGs requires detailed knowledge of employee roles and functions. While individuals with identical job titles typically get grouped together, variations in exposure levels may necessitate further segmentation.

For instance, a forklift operator in a production area may face different exposure risks than one working in a warehouse setting. These distinctions are crucial in determining whether SEGs are appropriately defined or need to be adjusted.

Next, address the highest priority risks with the most uncertain exposures. Unless regulations require it, avoid sampling for risks with well-established exposures, even if they are elevated or not well-controlled. Implementing control measures rather than obtaining additional data would address these well-established exposure risks better.  

How many samples each SEG needs depends on the method: OSHA, AIHA and EN 689 set different numbers. To ensure the samples represent the range of exposure conditions, they should be collected on multiple shifts, on various days, using different employees, and at varying times of the year.

Exposure results will indicate the SEG's risk category and the recommended controls:

Track the status of sampling efforts in the sampling plan and ensure employees get notified of results. These records demonstrate compliance with regulations and company policies and serve as valuable tools for communicating with management and operations to support decisions regarding controls and implementation strategies.

Utilizing recent sampling results during employee hazard communication training enhances understanding of workplace hazards and underscores the importance of control interventions.

It is crucial to maintain the IH sampling plan as a dynamic document. Regular reviews are necessary to ensure the relevance and adequacy of planned sampling activities, address priority hazards effectively, and manage the sampling budget efficiently.

The ongoing review, update, and communication process ensures that the IH sampling plan remains robust in safeguarding employee health and well-being.

How Many Samples You Need for an Exposure Assessment

OSHA's silica standards let you sample part of a group if it includes the workers expected to have the highest exposure. AIHA's strategy uses about 6 to 10 samples per similar exposure group for a statistical picture. EN 689 starts with 3 to 5 samples and asks for more when results aren't clearly low.

Can one sample show compliance?

Under the OSHA and MSHA silica rules, one full-shift personal sample is a compliance result for the worker and shift it covers. It doesn't show how exposure varies from day to day, so it says little about the rest of the group. EN 689 needs at least three results before it can reach any decision.

What is a similar exposure group, and how do you build one?

A similar exposure group (SEG) is a set of workers expected to have similar exposure because they do similar tasks, with similar materials and controls, in similar places. Build groups from tasks and locations. Split a group when its results vary much more than the others, or when one worker's results sit well above the rest.

What does AIHA's approach recommend?

AIHA's A Strategy for Assessing and Managing Occupational Exposures builds an exposure profile for each SEG and compares its upper end, usually the 95th percentile, with the limit. About 6 to 10 random samples per SEG is the commonly cited starting point for that profile. Groups with high variability, or results close to the limit, need more.

What does EN 689 require for a preliminary test?

Three to five results from the group. The group is compliant if three results are all below 10% of the limit, four are all below 15%, or five are all below 20%. Any result above the limit means it isn't compliant. Anything in between is inconclusive, and you move to the statistical test, which needs at least six results. Why periodic silica sampling misses exposure walks through that test with a worked example.

The method decides how many more sampling rounds a group needs. When a corporate hygiene lead at a diversified metals miner asked how EN 689's three-to-five sample rule compares with a Bayesian analysis of the same data, APT's hygienist ran the three, four and five sample cases on the call. In that case EN 689 was the stricter test, and the Bayesian analysis passed one group on three samples where EN 689 asked for more.

What if a site has no sampling history?

Start with a qualitative assessment that ranks tasks by likely exposure, then put the first samples on the groups with the highest expected exposure and the least information. Real-time dust monitoring can speed this up by showing which areas and hours carry the most dust, so the first filter samples go where they'll tell you the most.

How do you pick which workers to sample?

For a statistical profile, choose workers within each SEG at random so the results represent the group. For OSHA and MSHA silica monitoring, include the workers expected to have the highest exposure.

When do you need more samples?

• The EN 689 preliminary test is inconclusive.
• Results vary widely, for example with a geometric standard deviation above about 3.
• Results sit close to the limit.
• A process, material, control or crew changes.

Some programs still use a fixed percentage. Hygienists at a mining business unit with several mine sites had used a fixed 6% sampling protocol and didn't consider it sound. They asked for sample counts per exposure group from a recognized method such as EN 689, with more samples called for when variability rises.

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