Industrial hygiene auditing plays a pivotal role in maintaining safe and healthy workplaces. By identifying potential hazards and ensuring compliance with health and safety standards, these audits are essential for protecting workers and promoting a culture of safety. Today, we’ll explore the practice of industrial hygiene auditing and how it helps keep us safe.
This post will explore what industrial hygiene auditing entails, why it’s essential, and the steps to conduct an effective audit. By the end, you’ll have a comprehensive understanding of how to implement industrial hygiene audits in your workplace to safeguard the health and safety of everyone involved.
What You’ll Learn
- Understanding Industrial Hygiene Audits: Learn what industrial hygiene audits are and their role in maintaining workplace safety and health.
- Importance of Auditing: Discover why regular industrial hygiene audits are crucial for identifying and mitigating potential hazards.
- Steps for Conducting an Audit: Gain a step-by-step guide on performing a comprehensive industrial hygiene audit, from preparation to implementation.
Introduction
Industrial hygiene auditing measures the effectiveness of an industrial hygiene program against goals, standards, and regulatory requirements. It involves considering the relationship between workers, management, plant and equipment, procedures, materials, and the environment.
There are four aspects of an industrial hygiene audit:
- Reviewing the program’s organization and procedures
- Evaluating trends in occupational injury and illness
- Reviewing methods for recognition, evaluation, and control of hazards and
- Assessing training and communications.
Policies and Procedures
Policies and procedures relating to the industrial hygiene program should be reviewed to ensure they:
- Enable an adequate and efficient use of resources
- Meet the goal of identifying hazards and minimizing risk
- Achieving the stated goals (for instance, that exposure to a hazardous substance is less than the occupational exposure standard)
- Can adapt to changes in the program focus.
The program should be checked for content and applicability at the workplace. This includes having a mechanism to receive and interpret the various legislative and regulatory requirements. It also means having appropriate delegation of responsibility to ensure the organization is aware of emerging changes to legislation (about or about substance or agent).
Emergency procedures and communications between workers and management should also be investigated. The methods and effectiveness of reporting/recording accidents and illnesses should be reviewed through discussion with workers, comparing hazard identification or accident reporting processes, and workers’ compensation data.
Senior leadership should maintain, review, and support any documentation relating to managing industrial hygiene risks. Commitment by all levels of the workforce is vital to gaining a sense of ownership and empowerment of the system. Disengaged workers may not be willing to identify industrial hygiene hazards if they believe their opinions will not be taken seriously and appropriately actioned.
Evaluating Trends
Evaluating trends in injuries and accidents is one indicator that can be used to determine the effectiveness of the industrial hygiene program. The disadvantage of adopting this type of approach is that such evaluations are negative (or lagging) indicators compared to a proactive or positive performance analysis. The advantages, however, lie in the ability to identify unsafe conditions and unsafe work practices. Costs associated with occupational illness can also be analyzed, and potential savings can be highlighted.
Reviewing Risk Management Systems
This part of the industrial hygiene audit allows for the review of hazard recognition procedures and documentation, such as walkthrough surveys, area plans of the workplace, safety data sheets, and job safety analyses.
The mechanism for workers’ consultation and feedback with management should also be reviewed at this stage. Other aspects that could be investigated include;
- The adequacy of process and equipment design to control or minimize exposure.
- The standard operating procedures (SOPs) are in place and are reviewed regularly.
- Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) procedures might include equipment assignment to workers, maintenance, control, and use.
- Management audits and their frequency, the personnel involved, and the follow-up methods.
- Worker training programs.
- Emergency response capabilities.
Training and Communication
The aim of this section of the audit is to review the workers’ training programs for relevance, success in informing, motivating, and modifying worker behavior, and ability to convey management’s commitment to a healthy work environment. Some issues that may be investigated and checked are:
- Procedures for new worker orientation/induction.
- Hazard communication training.
- On-the-job training programs.
- Written communication.
- Frequency and content of employee meetings and awareness programs.
- Consultation mechanisms and methods of obtaining feedback include toolbox talks and roundtable meetings.
- Professional training skills of the trainers. For instance, are they occupational hygienists, engineers, production management, or employee relations staff?
When to Audit?
The frequency of auditing will depend on its aims and application. For instance, is the audit’s chief goal to determine compliance with legislation, or is it to identify hazards? Is it a management systems audit, for instance, ISO 45001 (Zigulis, 2020)? Audits can be conducted periodically, intermittently, continuously, or on special occasions.
Periodic audits are scheduled at regular intervals and may include auditing of specific hazards, for instance, buildings and grounds, general housekeeping, hazardous substances, portable hand tools, and ergonomics.
Intermediate audits are made at irregular intervals and are usually unannounced, for example, emergency evacuation procedures and confined space entry procedures.
Continuous audits are part of the workplace’s day-to-day operation. Responsibility is usually allocated to all people in the workplace and continual improvement is the goal in this case.
Special audits are for especially hazardous situations such as lighting, container labeling, hearing protector audits, and use of gloves.
Summary
Recent research into the relationship between reactive and proactive safety indices suggests that risk management and training, as well as controlling unsafe acts and conditions, results in improved health and safety performance (Mohammadi et al., 2020). The four elements of an industrial hygiene program presented in this blog, align with these findings.
Helpful Resources
- Providing Safe & Healthy Workplace with ISO 45001:2018: Implementation of OHSMS, by Ramesh Grover and Sachin Grover
- Conducting a Noise Survey Blog Post, by Megan Tranter
Bibliography
Mohammadi, H., Heidari, H., Arsang Jang, S., Ghafourian, M., & Soltanzadeh, A. (2020, October). Relationship between reactive and proactive safety indices: A case study in the chemical industries. Archives of Occupational Health, 4(4), 842-848. http://aoh.ssu.ac.ir/article-1-159-en.pdf.
Zigulis, G. (2020, September). How Does Industrial Hygiene Relate to Risk-Based Safety Management? Occupational Health and Safety. https://ohsonline.com/Articles/2020/09/01/How-Does-Industrial-Hygiene-Relate-to-RiskBased-Safety-Management.aspx