subject: Industrial Hygiene Monitoring In Manufacturing Plants [print this page] Manufacturing plants are full of all sorts of hazards. There is a lot of dangerous equipment and often times a lot of different small jobs are being performed at one time. The assembly line concept allows for greater production of a single item. However, the downfall of an assembly line like process is that having one employee performing a repetitive job over and over again breeds boredom and sometimes carelessness. Employees grow to have a sense of safety around the equipment that they use on a day to day basis and can get careless.
Many manufacturing plant buildings are old, they have often been renovated on the outside but still many of these plants do not conduct regular industrial hygiene monitoring. Typically the only time an industrial hygienist is asked to come in and perform some monitoring is when OSHA issues violations or someone complains. This school of thought, of monitoring only when there is already a problem is antiquated, and potentially harmful to the employees. When a problem arises is a great time to have an industrial hygienist come, inspect the building and do some monitoring, but instead of waiting till the next problem arises, they should be performing inspections, training and monitoring annually if not quarterly.
The Operations Manager or Safety Manager is in charge of ensuring the health safety of all the employees working in the plant. Sometimes in operations that are small the Operations Manager is the Safety Manager and sometimes the role of ensuring safety is given to an HR Manager. Whoever has the job of overseeing the safety of the employees has to be absolutely certain that no matter what job is being performed and not matter where the job is being performed the environment is as safe as possible. When there is a problem that is a great time to call on the Industrial Hygienist, it is not a good idea to just ignore the problem. Safety problems dont just magically disappear, they tend to get worse and then OSHA magically shows up and not what was a quick fix is tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix.
One quick call to an environmental, health and safety firm and you can have an inspection or audit that will be able to tell you what type of industrial hygiene monitoring you need. If you are concerned that you need some IH monitoring but are unsure what type you need click here to find an industrial hygiene firm near you.
