Posts Tagged ‘Gas Detection Safety’

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Portable Gas Detector Safety – Part 3 of 3 – Common Myths

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

This is the third part of a three part series about portable gas detector safety. The first blog discussed the basics of portable gas detectors while the second blog discussed the how and when of testing and calibration.  Thanks to a great article in OH&S, today we’ll talk about common myths about gas detector safety.

Myth 1: Gas detectors needs to be calibrated only to make up for sensor drift

Not true.  Basically, any time a gas detector is used, all prior bump tests are no longer valid.  Anything could have happened to the unit since it was tested and you need to check it again with gas.

Myth 2: My gas detector does a self bump test so I don’t need to calibrate or test it

Wrong.  These tests only verify that the sensor is operational but doesn’t mean the unit is detecting gas.  For example, the sensor might be covered by a chemical which is preventing it from detecting gas, but the sensor could still be working.

Myth 3: I barely use my gas detector, so I don’t need to calibrate or setup a bump test procedure

Incorrect. Everything needs to be documented. If you don’t have the proper documentation that shows tests were done, then it doesn’t matter. Regardless of how many times you use the unit, you need to document and conduct calibrations and tests. You should always maintain a bump test schedule and document all that information.

This concludes my 3 part series on gas detector safety.  Let me know if you have any ideas for other safety series!

source: OH&S

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Portable Gas Detector Safety – Part 1 of 3 – The Basics – Calibration and Bump Tests

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

Gas detectors have been in the news quite a lot lately and we have been getting more and more of our users using Field ID to manage and schedule their portable gas detectors.  I am not a gas detector expert, so I thought it would be fitting that I wrote a series of blog posts about them as I learn about them.  Today, I am going start off today with some basics.

What does it mean to calibrate?

The only way to fully ensure that a gas detection device is working, is to have it exposed to a known concentration of gas.  By exposing the instrument to a known concentration of gas, we can figure out if the sensors are responding accurately and if the proper alarms are going off.

What are “bump” tests and full calibrations?

The two methods of verifying a gas detector is by conducting a bump test or a full calibration.  Either works, it just depends on the situation.  Both tests expose a known concentration of gas to the sensors in the gas detector to see if they are reading to a specified accuracy within specific time duration.

What is the difference between a “bump” test and a calibration?

The only difference between a “bump” test (or functional test) and a calibration is whether or not the unit is adjusted after it has been exposed to the gas.  If the readings are inaccurate, the unit has to be adjusted.  Basically, a “bump” test is a short quick test and a calibration is a more thorough process.

Check in next week as I discuss the “how and when” of calibration!

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New OSHA Enforcement Guidance for Personal Protective Equipment in General Industry

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

OSHA LogoWhenever I walk by a construction site and see everyone wearing fall protection harnesses, hard hats and other PPE I wonder “who pays for that?”.  It definitely differs from industry to industry, but as of February 10, 2011 it just became a lot more clear.  OSHA has issued their Enforcement Guidance for Personal Protective Equipment in General Industry.  The goal of this documented (taken right from the source) is:

“This instruction, Enforcement Guidance for Personal Protective  Equipment in General Industry, establishes OSHA’s general enforcement and guidance policy for its standards addressing personal protective equipment (PPE). It instructs OSHA enforcement personnel on both the agency’s interpretations of those standards and the procedures for enforcing them.”

PPE Exmples

What I found particularly interesting about this document is how detailed OSHA is about what they require for specific occupations.  The standards are broken down into 5 main categories, but all of these have a large number of sub-categories.  The 5 main categories are:

  1. General Industry
  2. Shipyard
  3. Marine Terminals
  4. Longshoring
  5. Construction

These categories then break down into 143 sub-categories.  Some examples of sub-categories are focused on basic head and foot protection but also cover what one would need when working in very specific areas, such as working with lead.  This type of reading may not be very exciting, but it is put in place to save lives and safety managers must be familiar with their PPE requirements.

OSHA very clearly spells out what they are looking for when doing an inspection in this document.  One of the sections in the document is very clearly titled “Inspection Guidelines For General Industry”.  Having a good PPE program including tracking your PPE will help keep your workers safe and also ensure you don’t get into any trouble if you are the subject of an OSHA inspection.

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3 Facility Safety Management Challenges

Friday, February 4th, 2011

Fall Arrest Ladder

Over the past 4 years, Field ID has made progression from tracking safety for rigging gear, to cranes and hoists to fall protection.  Now we handle work area inspections and tracking safety data about people as well.  You would think that once you have software to track chain slings, it must be no problem to track hoists; but it’s not that easy.  After 4 years of hard work, Field ID is now flexible enough to track safety inspections for almost anything in a manufacturing facility, oil and gas facility or mine site.  This is commonly referred to as Inspection and Safety Compliance Management (ISCM) on our website, but I have heard another term for this as well: facility safety management.  There is even a magazine dedicated to this exact topic of the same name.  So what does facility safety management cover?  I have listed the top 3 we hear about daily below, but these are just a few.

1.  Fall Protection

If you have a harness, you have to inspect it according to the manufacturers recommendations, which is at least once a year.  If you have a lot of harnesses (more than 10) you now need to know where they are and when they are due for inspection.  Imagine a harness is out on a job for weeks and it is due for inspection,  Multiply that problem by hundreds of harnesses and you have a lot to keep track of!

2.  Ladders

Before we started up Field ID, I never really thought about ladders.  Now I think about them all the time, which is somewhat embarrassing.  I certainly never put any thought into the fact that they are required to be inspected.  Similar to most items that need to be inspected, a few of them are no problem – but how do you manage hundreds, or even thousands of ladders.  Excel just doesn’t cut it.

3.  Fire Extinguishers

We have all seen fire extinguishers with stickers hanging off of them.  Whether it has been at the shopping mall or a restaurant.  Quite often that sticker is a record of inspection, someones initials or signature beside the date that they inspected it.  What you probably don’t think about when seeing that sticker, is who is keeping track of it?  Who ensures that it is inspected regularly?  Well, at a large oil and gas facility or mine site, it is the responsibility of the safety manager, and guess what?  That safety manager is required to keep track of hundreds of fire extinguishers and ensure they are ready for action in the case of an emergency.

These are only the top 3 challenges that we hear about every single day.  Sure, managing one of them may not seem that challenging, but combine all 3 and add eye-wash stations, first aid kits, hoses, valves, rigging gear (the list goes on) and this is more than a full time job.  Having the right tool makes a world of difference.

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Posted in Equipment Safety, Industrial Safety, Inspection Software, Safety Compliance, Safety Management | 2 Comments »

Vacationing, Hotels and Safety Compliance!

Friday, December 31st, 2010

Happy Upcoming New Years Everyone! I hope you had a very happy and safe holiday, and that now you are refreshed, you can go back to the grind being as safe as you could possibly be! As much as I would like to share in the wonders of being back at work, I am actually still on vacation. So as I sit here writing this blog post, I would like to tell you about my latest vacation adventure and how safety compliance still managed to pop up in my head while sitting in a hotel room.

Have you ever noticed how many things you could do in a hotel? Not just eat, sleep and watch tv, but I mean how entertained you can be just using all the facilities of a hotel. You could go swimming, go to the spa, shop downstairs, have a great workout, attend a party, see a show and even run down to the arcade with the kids: All without leaving the hotel. But with all these features, hotels also have to make sure that they engage in frequent safety inspections in order to make it work. With all that a hotel can provide, this means a lot of safety inspections.

I found out a couple of the most common safety hazards in hotels and what management must do to ensure this does not happen:

  1. 1. All portable electrical appliances (hairdryers, televisions, kettles) must be frequently tested and inspected due to the high possibility of wear and tear due to overuse.
  2. 2. Staff must be trained on proper methods of manual delivery ( including luggage and room service) and heavy lifting should be avoided during housekeeping and making of the beds.
  3. Swimming pools must be supervised and the water must be disinfected. There is a daily test ran for the water in swimming pools and these tests are recorded. The gym must also be supervised and instructions on how to use each machine should be provided to all hotel guests before use. All gym equipment also has to be maintained and inspected regularly.
  4. All windows must provide devices that prevent them from being opened too wide. It should not open wide enough to pose a threat to someone falling out.

This is actually a very brief list of all the different inspections and assessments that have to be done in order to keep a hotel up and running. I haven’t even mentioned food safety for the restaurants, or the numerous warnings and instructions posted in the hotel regarding fire safety. With the number of people checking in and out of a hotel daily, it is sometimes very hard to see how much work is being done to keep our hotel stay pleasant.

If you think about it, considering the amount of inspections that they must conduct and its high frequency, it might be even better to use some sort of inspection software, but that is a topic for another blog day. For now, just remember that the next time you step into a hotel for a 2 night visit, breathe a sigh of relief in knowing how many people work hard everyday to ensure no matter how short your stay is, it will forever be, a safe one.

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