subject: Key Aspects To Ensure Safe Sewer Maintenance [print this page] Elmer E. Ross, Journal (Water Pollution Control Federation) Vol. 35
Dwell in attend to not remember with the aim of to take place in effect, safety programs have to, through nonstop appraisal, re-emphasize and re-educate us to the safety aspects of our operations until safety becomes the way of life, or else state of mind, in favor of all concerned-the designer, the engineer, the operator, and the maintenance gentleman. All time publications and other news media offer shocking reports of serious injury and death to sewer construction and maintenance personnel. Almost consistently the injuries and sufferers get resulted from violating lone or else new fundamental safety practices.
The maintenance of sewers and sewerage systems is accepted such as being a risky occupation and near is ample algebraic evidence to support this classification. Not solitary does this exert yourself absorb from top to bottom exposure to the broad-spectrum hazards frequent to all built-up occupations requiring a from top to bottom level of corporeal interest and hard work, it besides involves exposure to infection, contagious diseases, risky atmospheres, and special hazards due to write to with, or else to the presence of, mess and mess resources.
Exposure of sewer workers to injury from street traffic, construction falls, minder lifting, falling objects, foreign bodies in the sphere of the eyes, and other frequent built-up hazards, is abnormally from top to bottom. This is due to the requirement in favor of having to exert yourself in the sphere of a confined space on wet and slippery surfaces and in favor of having to climb into and old hat of deep underground structures through undersized openings often encumbered by defending clothing and equipment. In the sphere of California on your own, these hazards were the cause of 45 of a figure up of 52 disabling exert yourself injuries reported in 1961.
Protection touching street traffic can take place provided by by the book positioning vehicles, by routing traffic around exert yourself areas, using traffic cones, and other counsel policy. Eye injuries, injuries from cascade on wet slippery surfaces, and from falling objects can take place prevented by only if, and requiring personnel to wear, approved-type safety hats, shoes, glasses, and other defending equipment.
Wherever on the cards, manhole steps ought to not take place used to increase access to sewers. These are often coated with grease or else slippery biological growths, and with age, happen to diluted by rust until they preference not support a man's burden. Portable ladders ought to take place used to enter shallow sewers. Hefty, deep manholes can take place entered safely and conveniently by using a locked up platform A-frame and hoist. This equipment can besides take place used to increase access not solitary to sewers, but besides to sludge incorporation tanks and other deep, risky structures by the wastewater management set. Someplace this cannot take place used, a light-weight telescoping metal climbing ladder is recommended. The A-frame, which can take place quickly and by a long way disassembled and transported, can besides take place used in favor of other maintenance exert yourself relating lifting, by this means dipping exposure to back and other injuries due to lifting minder objects.
Closed-circuit television has at this moment been urban to the feature someplace it can often take place used in favor of sewer inspection exert yourself, by this means avoiding exposure of personnel to the hazard of entering flowing sewers. Rafts can take place used to inspect and insist outline 42 in the sphere of. In the sphere of diameter and bigger, under low-flow conditions.
