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Hi all, I thought I would start my first forum post with one of my pet hates 'COSHH Assessments' and for the record one of my other major dislikes is (and I'm putting that politely) 'Manual Handling Training' but that’s for another discussion!!!
Anyway back to the matter in hand, COSHH. The question that I want to put out there is……Are COSHH assessments done really badly?
Having worked as a Health and Safety Inspector and within the private sector as a consultant, a reoccurring theme would regularly crop up (apologies for using reoccurring and regularly in the same sentence when they pretty much mean the same thing. I’m Welsh and often use repeated words in phrases such as ‘Whose coat is that jacket??’
Anyway I’m slightly degreasing (sorry I meant digressing. Apologies agian I’m one of those blokes who thinks that Grenoble in the South of France is where the mid 80’s nuclear disaster occurred). Back to my point - COSHH., I have so very often seen this area of health and safety done so very badly. The common mistakes are as follows:
· Businesses think it all about chemicals and forget or are unaware about physical and biological hazards such as food and wood dust, and occupational diseases.
· Daft COSHH forms that offer no more purpose than transferring info from a COSHH data sheet.
· Think its all about PPE and are happy to supply their staff with BnQ facemasks and marigolds when spray paintings!!!.
· Forget to think about the task in hand and not consider COSHH into their task risk assessment.
· Possibly look at the shite and over complicated ‘COSHH Essentials’ produced by the HSE!!!
Kind regards and would appreciate your comments
Owain Hughes, and before you ask, no I don’t!
Anyway back to the matter in hand, COSHH. The question that I want to put out there is……Are COSHH assessments done really badly?
Having worked as a Health and Safety Inspector and within the private sector as a consultant, a reoccurring theme would regularly crop up (apologies for using reoccurring and regularly in the same sentence when they pretty much mean the same thing. I’m Welsh and often use repeated words in phrases such as ‘Whose coat is that jacket??’
Anyway I’m slightly degreasing (sorry I meant digressing. Apologies agian I’m one of those blokes who thinks that Grenoble in the South of France is where the mid 80’s nuclear disaster occurred). Back to my point - COSHH., I have so very often seen this area of health and safety done so very badly. The common mistakes are as follows:
· Businesses think it all about chemicals and forget or are unaware about physical and biological hazards such as food and wood dust, and occupational diseases.
· Daft COSHH forms that offer no more purpose than transferring info from a COSHH data sheet.
· Think its all about PPE and are happy to supply their staff with BnQ facemasks and marigolds when spray paintings!!!.
· Forget to think about the task in hand and not consider COSHH into their task risk assessment.
· Possibly look at the shite and over complicated ‘COSHH Essentials’ produced by the HSE!!!
Kind regards and would appreciate your comments
Owain Hughes, and before you ask, no I don’t!
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by Andy Pattinson 1 year agoi agree totaly with the comments regarding CoSHH assessments, i have seen some that had less informasion than the DATA sheet they were made from, and at the other end of the scale have seen a work pack with 39 asssessments for the use WD40, every single application and use were covered. -
by Richard Brown 2 years agoCerith
Where to start? Completely agree with you about much of the nonsense that is produced as alleged COSHH Assessments. Completely agree with you about the dash for PPE. Completely agree with you about organisations being blind to substances that don't come with an MSDS such as by-products of processes, bacteria and the like, combustion products and so on.
My particular pet hate is the sub contracting out of COSHH Assessments to a certain company well favoured by the Construction and Oil & Gas industries. These assessments are completed by some one sitting in an office somewhere in middle England, not having much idea about the task and never having visited the site. The assessments they produce are substance based not task based .... rant, rant, rant.
I do however disagree with you on COSHH Essentials. Its purpose is to provide an "expert system" to support SMEs who lack the resources to undertake high quality COSHH Assessments themselves. It uses objective measures of hazard through risk phrase, boiling point etc and evaluates process risk through reference back to HSE's large pool of monitoring data. So they should provide a reproducible assessment for the same working conditions regardless of who completes the data entry (providing the data is accurate). In general the technique used by COSHH Essentials is called Control Banding and is now being widely developed around the world by NIOSH, ILO, IOHA etc. Some of the techniques used in developing COSHH Essentials are being improved and enhanced for REACH for the production of the new Chemical Safety Assessment that will be attached to the new stle MSDS.
It will be interesting to see where REACH takes chemical hazards communication and chemical risk assessment - although it won't help with the wood dust and Diesel engine exhaust or Legionella.
One of the new things that REACH is introducing will be a new term for exposure limits. (Oh no, not again!). We will now have DNEL (Derived No Effect Level) and DMEL (Derived Minimum Effect Level).
And I quite like COSHH Assessments but then I am a Chemist, an Occupational Hygienist and perhaps a little sad.