Identify, Assess and Minimise Immediate Hazards to Health and Safety of Self and Others

Control hazards in the situation

A hazard is a condition or situation that exists with the potential to cause injury or illness. There are a number of hazards such as physical, chemical, ergonomic, radiation, psychological and biological. In this topic we will concentrate mainly on physical hazards in the workplace.

A physical hazard is something that you can see that poses a risk to your health or your safety as well as to the health and safety of others.

Types of physical hazards

There are different types of physical hazards. These can include the following:

• Excessive noise
• High or low temperatures
• Anything that can cause slips, trips and falls, for example a wet floor, cords lying on the floor
• Mechanical, for example, poor lighting
• Electrical, for example frayed wires
• Layout of the workplace, for example, high shelves poorly-designed work stations
• Equipment in the workplace, for example, faulty equipment

What hazards do you see as you walk around your workplace or even in your own home? Perhaps you see:

• A chair with a wobbly leg
• A frayed electrical cord
• A floor mat with the corner turned up
• A table with a sharp edge
• A rusty nail sticking out of a fence

Types of physical hazards and how they can affect you

Let's revisit the examples of physical hazards listed above. Ask yourself, could these hazards cause injury or sickness?

The answer is yes, they could.

Take each example above and think of how each hazard could cause harm to you. Did you come up with the answers below?

• If you sat on a chair with a wobbly leg the chair could break, and you could fall off the chair and hurt yourself
• If you used a frayed electrical cord, you could be electrocuted and cause serious harm to your body, particularly your heart
• You could trip over the corner of the floor mat causing you to fall and injure yourself, perhaps breaking a bone or twisting your ankle
• You could scratch yourself walking past a table with a sharp edge
• You could puncture yourself with the rusty nail sticking out of a drawer

Physical hazards cannot only cause injuries, they can also cause sickness. For example, poor lighting or lack of ventilation in the workplace can cause headaches or sickness. These conditions can lead you to feel tired and to become unproductive in your job and, ultimately, you could make mistakes which could possibly cause further injuries to yourself or others.

Minimising immediate risk

There's not much point identifying and reporting a chair with a broken leg if that chair is going to remain where it is. A further step needs to be taken to minimise the immediate risk by removing the chair to prevent people from sitting on it and falling over.

A risk is the probability of a hazard that results in injury or illness. We need to ask ourselves how likely it is that this particular situation could occur and how serious it could be?

Types of immediate risks

Generally, risks may include:

• worksite equipment, furniture machinery and substances
• environmental risks
• bodily fluids
• further injury to the casualty

If you see a frayed electrical cord, this should alert you to the possibility that somebody could be electrocuted if they used it. This is very likely (high risk) and immediate action should be taken, such as removing the cord, thus prohibiting its use.

Let's look at the following example:

You are asked by your supervisor to clean the glass on the photocopier machine with a particular cleaning chemical. You think about the safety of using a cleaning solution without wearing gloves. You think of the risk of direct contact with the cleaning solution on your hands and its consequences. The chemical could be absorbed through your skin and into your blood stream possibly causing a burn to your skin and generalised poisoning.

Is there an immediate risk to you? Absolutely. How could the risk be controlled? Your workplace needs to supply disposable gloves if it is expected that staff will use cleaning solutions.