MEMIC Safety Blog

You know how to make an entrance, what about an EXIT?

 Posted by Tony Soares

It is not enough to ensure the safety of your employees during normal work activities. When an evacuation is necessary, you will need responsible, trained individuals who can supervise and coordinate activities to ensure a safe and successful evacuation.  This is Part 1 of a multi-part post regarding emergency evacuations and how employers can prepare for the worst.  Check out OSHA’s Emergency Action Plan E-Tool for additional resources regarding this subject.

Part 1 – How large are your Exit Doors?

The exit route refers to how employees will travel from their workstation to the exit door. Workers may need to go down hallways, passageways, corridors, open aisle ways, stairwells, through doorways, lobbies, etc., until the exit door is reached. The Exit door may lead out to a parking lot, sidewalk, busy alley, or outdoor courtyard.

Building and Fire Codes require a certain number of exit routes and exit routes, depending on several factors:

• Low-density workplaces do not require as many exits. High-rise office buildings must have multiple exits designed to handle many people.
• The size of the building also impacts the number of exits.
• The arrangement of the building also affects the number of exits. A square building with open floor spaces probably does not need as many exits as an odd-shaped building.
• The type of occupancy also impacts the number of exits. A building in which flammable chemicals are stored or used will require more exits because a fire could be started more easily and also spread more quickly.

Keep in mind that from any point in a building, there must be at least two exit routes to provide different ways for employees to leave the workplace safely during an emergency.

• A single exit route is allowed in some rare cases. The number of employees, the size of the building, and the arrangement of the workplace is such that a single exit will allow all employees to exit safely during an emergency. Other means of escape, such as an accessible window, are required to be provided in case the one exit becomes blocked.
• The exit route must be large enough to accommodate the maximum permitted occupant load for each floor served by the evacuation route. If a stairwell is designed to serve as an evacuation route for many floors, it must be able to handle the maximum occupant load of each of those floors.
• The capacity of an exit route cannot decrease at any point. This may create a bottleneck in the exit route and block the route. It might cause panic as people are wondering why everyone has stopped. Injuries might occur as people try to push forward into the bottleneck.  Do not use exit routes as storage areas, because this results in decreased capacity of the exit route.
• Exit routes must always be a minimum of 7 feet 6 inches high. Objects such as ceiling fans or sprinkler heads cannot hang down below 6 feet 8 inches.
• Exit routes must always be a minimum of 28 inches wide at all points. This includes the distance between handrails.

Look for Part 2 on this subject soon.  In the meantime, here is an additional resource on Fire Doors.

OSHA and Compliance Based Safety

 Posted by Randy Klatt

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while other people will find a way around the laws."     - Plato (427-347 B.C.)

Judging from the above quote it seems safe to say that rules and regulations have been around for a long time and that some people have always had difficulty following them.  The same is true when it comes to complying with the OSHA standards.  

There is no doubt that attempting to be compliant with all applicable OSHA standards is a difficult task.  The sheer volume of regulation, the varying interpretations, and the bureaucratic hyperbole can be overwhelming.  But when it comes to employee safety, the focus really should be on doing the right thing.  As daunting as the OSHA standards are, they are based upon one goal:  protecting the worker from job related hazards.  If that is truly the priority then often the situation will call for safety measures above and beyond what the federal law requires. 

Ergonomics is perhaps the best example of this.  Preventing cumulative trauma disorders is the right thing to do, but there is no OSHA standard covering this… at least not yet.  Don’t simply ask, “what does OSHA require?”  The right question to ask is, “what is the best way to complete the task safely?”  This is not subjective; there are best practices to adopt for just about everything.  Keep in mind that just because you never got hurt doing something doesn’t mean it is a safe practice.

Compliance based safety has a role in all businesses, but developing a positive safety culture takes far more than simply following the rules.  Encourage people to report hazards, develop new training ideas, look out for one another, enforce higher standards of behavior, and nurture younger workers as they learn the job.  Safety is truly everyone’s responsibility, not just the “compliance managers” job. 

MEMIC policyholders can log onto the Safety Director for more information on developing a positive safety culture at your place of business. 

Meeting OSHA's Revised HazCom Standard's Training Requirements

 Posted by Greg LaRochelle

With OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) remaining as one of the top five most frequently cited standards against employers (ranking #2 in fiscal year 2012), now’s the time to prepare for meeting the first compliance deadline of December 1, 2013 for employee training on the revised HazCom standard.  By this date, employers must train their workers on the new label elements and safety data sheet (SDS) format.  As OSHA states on their HCS webpage, “The standard that gave workers the right to know, now gives them the right to understand.”

In a previous MEMIC Safety Net blog posted in April 2012, a summary of the completion dates, compliance requirements, and effected parties was provided with information on the final rule stage of the revised HCS to align with the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS).  Since then, several resources have become available to facilitate the training requirements including the following:

• OSHA December 1, 2013 Training Requirements Fact Sheet
• OSHA Brief on Labels and Pictograms
• OSHA Hazard Communication Quick Cards

Additionally, MEMIC policyholders have access to the following:

• Hazard Communication and the Globally Harmonized System Webinar (in the On Demand Webinars section of the MEMIC Safety Director)
• GHS: Globalize Your Communication (available in DVD and streaming video format through the Video Lending Library)
• HazCom and GHS training sessions (available in the BLR section of the MEMIC Safety Director in a variety of formats…handouts, audio presentation, PowerPoint)

So don’t delay and remember to document all safety training as objective evidence of fulfilling your training compliance requirements.