WSH HAZARDS ASSOCIATED WITH THE WORKPLACE
INTRODUCTION
Company XXXX is the world leading
manufacturer of polymeric medical grade components and systems for injectable
drug delivery, including stoppers, seals for vials, and closures.
Its business operations mainly served the hospital,
healthcare and pharmaceuticals industries. In view of Company XXXX varying
customer’s products requirements, it employ substantial amount of both
hazardous and flammable chemicals in it’s manufacturing operations
At it’s facility located at YYYY, Company
XXXX risky installation sites include:
Steam Boiler
Air Receiver
Chemical Liquid Store
Flammable Liquid Store.
Toxic Industrial Waste Storage
Substantial amount of hazardous and flammable
substances were stored and used in Company XXXX manufacturing operations which
require both a hazardous substance permit and Petroleum and Flammable Material
Storage license.
To comply with the National Environment
Agency , the Environmental Protection and Management Act, Section 26, Company
XXXX have to conduct pollution/hazard/risk impact studies on its hazardous
installations and this include both the chemical liquid store ,flammable liquid
store and toxic industrial wastes storage.
The
purposes of the QRA are to:
·
identify and quantify hazards and risks related to
the transport, use and storage of hazardous materials;
·
determine hazards/risks due to possible accident
scenarios which will lead to fire, explosion or toxic release;
·
recommend measures to be incorporated in the design
and operation of the plant to keep hazards/risks to as low a level as
practical;
·
facilitate the development of emergency response
plans to deal with all possible accident scenarios
In
view of Company XXX manufacturing requirement, it is prone to both chemical and
physical hazards due to significant amount of hazardous substances and
flammables employed in their manufacturing operations as well as the use of
lifting equipment, gears, appliances , utilities such as the steam boiler, air
compressor and air receiver to power it’s utility
IDENTIFY CHEMICAL HAZARD
To
identify the chemical hazards, Company XXX should consider the use of QRA, where key elements of risks, such as the
statistically expected frequency of an accident and the statistically expected
consequences of exposure to a toxic gas, must be determined using these
probabilistic variables.
QRA
is an approach for estimating the risk of chemical operations using
probabilistic information. And it is fundamentally different approach from
those used in many other engineering activities because interpreting the
results of QRA requires an increased sensitivity to uncertainties that arise
primarily from the probabilistic character of the data
Estimating
the frequencies and consequences of rare accidents is a synthesis process that
provides a basis for understanding risk. Using this synthesis process, we can develop
risk estimates for hypothetical accidents based upon our experience with the individual
basic events that combine to cause the accident. System logic models are used
to couple the basic events together, thus defining the ways accident can occur
IDENTIFY BIOLOGICAL HAZARD
When
considering hazards from pathogenic bacteria, however, a qualitative risk
assessment may be the only feasible method currently available to derive an
assessment of the severity and the likelihood of harm associated with exposure
through ingestion of a food. However, both the quantitative and qualitative
methods will depend on the type and quality of information developed during the
risk assessment process.
While
the basic steps are the same, their application will be different when
conducting a qualitative assessment, as the analyst will not have the
information necessary to develop a mathematical estimate of the probability
and/or severity of an adverse consequence. When assessing risk for some
biological agents, sufficient data may be available to conduct a quantitative
analysis. However, the analyst will find that in most cases the many
uncertainties associated with how and when an organism may express pathogenic
potential will make a quantitative assessment impractical. Further research is
required to permit more accurate and quantitative assessments in the future.
In
the absence of quantitative data to develop an exposure assessment, measurement
of hazard levels at particular process steps, or segments of the production
chain, may provide a qualitative indication of likely risks to consumers. In
this respect comparative studies on biological hazard levels and qualitative
estimates of the likely effects of differences to human health can be used.
The
analysis of risk associated with bacterial pathogens presents unique
challenges. Any method used to assess the risk of hazards from food borne
bacteria will be complicated by factors resulting from methods used to grow,
process, store and prepare food for consumption. These can vary greatly depending
on cultural and geographical differences. Such factors describe the scenario
set for a given food and are an essential element in a risk assessment for
bacterial hazards.
As
already noted, in many cases sufficient data will not be available to support a
quantitative assessment of risk associated with pathogenic bacteria. The
following present an indication of the type of challenges that make
quantitative risk assessment difficult for pathogenic bacteria associated with
foods.
Bacterial
agents known to cause food borne disease have been identified by using
epidemiological and other data to link the organism and its source to illness.
However, as only a limited number of outbreaks are adequately investigated, it
is likely that a number of bacterial pathogens in food remain to be identified.
