Occupational Safety And Hazard Assessment In Steam Boilers

Nationwide Board Inspection Code (NBIC) and Factories and Machinery Act (Malaysia) recognized the possibility hazards of steam boilers and established various codes and regulations pertaining to controlling the hazards and minimizing risks. Each year, the authorized inspectors inspect fireside and waterside for defects, scaling, and corrosion. Each year, all essential valves and fittings are dismantled for inspection. Plate thickness is checked, boiler water analysis results are reviewed, and indeed, the authority enforces rigorous maintenance on steam boilers but still, various boiler accidents happened. One might wonder why. Rationale lies within salient factor: human error is entry cause of boiler no one can. One statistic indicated that 83% of boiler accidents were due to of human errors as a lack of knowledge and awareness. Although inspection has become stricter, the local authority doesn't cover inspection on boiler safety controls and all routine or non-routine occurrences. OSHA can only provide guidelines for safety the particular workplace but ensuring the implementations is beyond their scopes.

The fundamental cause of hazards a good organization is organizational insufficiencies. The inadequacies can be related to safety controls, safe operating procedures (SOP), hazard and risk assessment and controls, and training or recognition. With inadequacies, employees really do not realize the hazards and consequences of their actions. Therefore, to minimize or eliminate risks subjected to all employees, contractors, and visitors their particular activities, an organization should establish occupational as well as wellness safety (OHS) management system. Only through OHS that hazards could be recognized, and safety and health risks can be assessed and effectively addressed. The management can set objectives, provide suitable controls, provide sets of procedures (SOP's), organize training programs, and establish safety performance check-up.

Boilers have a lot of potential hazards that should be controlled by safety devices and safe work principle. Before identifying the hazards, one should be aware of the meaning of hazards. In this particular context, hazard is described as "a source or situation with a potential for harm in comparison to its injury or ill health, damage to property, or a combination of these". Start off identifying hazards, the management must know what activities are involved. Activities can be divided into two categories which are routine and non-routine. Routine activities include daily operation, chemical preparation, and fuel storage and handling, while non-routine activities include boiler overhaul, confined space entry, and emergency response. Your first stage in hazard identification is a selection of job to be analyzed.

The management is to choose the key activities first, such as daily operation and chemical preparation. In the second stage, OHS management is for you to interrupt the activities into logical steps. The logical steps must be unique on the activities, and trivia activities such as switching on lights in order to be avoided. Examples are taking data from various meters during operation, or pouring boiler chemicals into a jar. Associated with third stage, the management is to distinguish hazards and determine the corresponding risks each step. In planning boiler chemicals, the boiler operators are subjected to corrosive liquid spill and acid gas let loose. Risk is the consequence, and in this particular case, prospective for loss are eyes lesion and pain, burn injury, or cancer if handling hydrazine. High noise level that's above 85 dBA is example of hazard in daily operation and threat is obvious, which is deafness. In stage four, the management is to develop risk elimination or reduction measures.

For high noise level, risk elimination or reduction measures would require path noise control such as acoustic insulation (lining) or acoustic partition, enclosure for that noise-radiating source, increase pipe size lessen steam turbulence, or install noise diffuser. The best approach is control noise at source, such as installing silencer, changing equipment for example changing normal pressure reducing valve (PRV) to low-noise PRV. Other risk controls for high noise level would be wearing personal protective gear (PPE) or reducing exposure time. The most common hazard for boiler operation is low water and possibility of could be a permanent trouble for the boiler or huge increase. Modern boilers are usually equipped with automatic level controllers, low water level burner interlocks, low water alarm, and regular checking of gage glasses through boiler operators. All these are risk controls by safety appliances. Working in confined space is a non-routine activity, the hazard associated it will is physical injuries or fatalities as being a result asphyxia or poisonous gas, and the current risk control is following the guidelines of confined space entry, which shall quit covered these.

In pouring the chemical into a jar, the hazard is chemical splashes to eyes, and possibility is eye lesion and injury. From this, the chance control will wearing safety goggles. Kind of of daily operation is blowing over. Blowdown can cause spillage of hot water, is actually the hazard, and may scald boiler operators, which is the threaten. The example of risk control is blowing into the blowdown chamber instead of directly in the atmosphere thereby reducing potential spillage of hot water to surrounding.

In the final stage, after job safety analysis is finished for each activity, the activities, hazards and risks, and the related risk controls should be documented for reference. Based on that, safe operation procedures can be established to ensure risks in the workplace can be eliminated or minimized. Training must be conducted with competent person-in-charge to all boiler operators to explain in detail the hazards, risks, controls, procedures and responsibility too as accountability.

For any business which doesn't have structured OHS management system, I would recommend OHSAS 18001 or MS 1722 certification. OHSAS 18001 or MS 1722 provides an established of procedures and tools to promote continual improvement through hazard identification, risk assessment, and control of risk from a very systematic way. Apart from these benefits, I noticed with the implementation of OHSAS 18001 standards, the management and employees inside of my organization have improved significantly in their understanding of health and safety legislation as well as a chance to demonstrate concurrence.

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