Injury Prevention: Slips, Trips and Falls Wood Dust in Sawmills - Compilation of Industry Best Practices BC Faller Training Standard - Field Examination & Evaluation Dust Explosions - The Basics
When it comes to creating sustainable change and reducing injuries across the operations it can help to start small.
Injury Prevention can happen in many ways – it could be an in depth analysis of your recordable incidents, close calls and other strategic objectives within the company or it could be as simple as reviewing your first aid records to see if any patterns emerge then choosing to focus on a specific injury type.
Ultimately, your company may strive to reduce all injury types. But when it comes to creating sustainable change and reducing injuries across the operations it can help to start small and specific with the change and expand the effort as you see progress.
You may find your first aid records for your engineering crew show multiple sprains happening from jumping off a slash pile, a few bruises and cuts from falling down and a tweaked knee from tripping over gear left on the landing. It is up to you as an owner, supervisor or Joint health & safety committee to decide where to start in tackling slips, trips and fall injuries. You may decide that reducing or eliminating the multiple lost time incidents around the sprains represent the best value for your effort or it might make the most sense to focus on reducing or eliminating the more ‘expensive’ (in terms of claims costs, downtime and worker injury) incident of tripping.
If you are just getting started in Injury Prevention prioritizing your efforts and ensuring you give enough information, support and coaching to supervisors and workers to tackle a single or just a few issues will drive enough of an improvement to motivate your crews to take on another.
Starting small and demonstrating improvements to yourself and your team helps to build momentum in making further changes.
In the attached injury prevention package we focus on tips and techniques to help you educate yourself and your workers, improve your safety management system and inspire practical solutions for loss prevention in your operations. We invite you to join the discussion on our Forum (forum.bcforestsafe.org) to see how other forestry contractors are managing injuries in their business and share your best practices.
We encourage you to customize the material to your company, include your specific policies, procedures or equipment when conducting crew talks or program reviews.
If you need ideas for getting started contact the BC Forest Safety Council at 1‐877‐741‐1060 for free consultation. Experienced forest safety professionals are available free of charge to provide Advocacy to you in reducing injuries in your business.
Click here to download the Injury Prevention Slips, Trips and Falls Resource Package, which is a PDF document that is approx 4 Meg.
Courtesy of he BC Forest Safety Council.
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Wood Dust in Sawmills - Compilation of Industry Best Practices All field level hazard and risk assessments should be conducted by a qualified person before cleanup commences.
Two recent catastrophic fires and explosions occurring at BC sawmills have prompted a series of followup actions by industry, government and organized labour. One key step was to quickly poll operations and key organizations on industry practices specific to wood dust cleanup, control and associated fire prevention and protection measures.
This information has been compiled in the attached document and is available for your consideration. The materials cover a broad spectrum of fire prevention but do have a focus on combustible wood dust and specifically the cleanup and control of dust in sawmills.
When cleaning up combustible wood dust there is a potential to increase the risks associated with a variety of tasks and the potential for fire and explosion. The following introductory pages contain important considerations when addressing dust cleanup and control in your mill.
Of upmost importance is to:
The following documents are part of a document package supplied by WorkSafeBC. CLick on the following images for viewing.
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More documents from WorkSafeBC and the Foerst Industry
BC Faller Training Standard - Field Examination & Evaluation The 23-page BC Faller Training Standard - Field Examination & Evaluation form is used to certify new fallers and/or qualify certified fallers in new forest types and conditions.
Falling trees by hand requires highly specialized skills and a commitment to working safely every day. Fallers need to be aware of physical hazards, the dangers of fatigue and stress and the exacting requirements of meeting production demands.
It’s not for everyone, but for those who are up to the challenge, it is a rewarding and satisfying profession.
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In British Columbia, all manual tree fallers in forestry operations must be trained and certified. A forestry operation is generally viewed as any business where money is earned for tree removal and/or harvest by falling and bucking.
The BC Forest Safety Council is the certifying body for manual tree fallers, and we offer several different paths to certification.
If you are an experienced faller from another jurisdiction or industry, you have an option to challenge the certification standard by taking a written or oral exam and demonstrating your field skills. Click here for more information.
If you are new to falling trees, you will need to take our New Faller Training Course, followed by on-the-job training before applying for certification. Click here for more information.
Conditions For A Dust Explosion When fine dust particles are mixed with air in the form of a dust cloud, the particles surface area is greatly increased and if exposed to ignition, will burn with enormous rapidity generating a huge amount of heat almost instantly.
Conditions for an Explosion A dust cloud of any flammable material will explode where: (1) the concentration of dust in air falls within the explosive limits, and (2) a source of ignition of the required energy for that dust cloud is present. Conversely, an explosion can be prevented if one, or preferably both, of these conditions are avoided.
Characteristics of Dust Explosions When a mass of solid flammable material is heated it burns away slowly owing to the limited surface area exposed to the oxygen of the air. The energy produced is liberated gradually and harmlessly because it is dissipated as quickly as it is released. The result is quite different if the same mass of material is ground to a fine powder and intimately mixed with air in the form of a dust cloud. In these conditions the surface area exposed to the air is very great and if ignition now occurs the whole of the material will burn with great rapidity; the energy, which in the case of the mass was liberated gradually and harmlessly, is now released suddenly with the evolution of large quantities of heat and, as a rule, gaseous reaction products.
Explosive Concentrations Although an intimate mixture of a flammable dust and air may burn with explosive violence, not all mixtures will do so. There is a range of concentrations of the dust and air within which the mixture can explode, but mixtures above or below this range cannot. The lowest concentration of dust capable of exploding is referred to as the lower explosive limit and the concentration above which an explosion will not take place as the upper explosive limit.
The lower explosive limits of many materials have been measured. They vary from 10 grams per cubic metre to about 500 grams per cubic metre. For most practical purposes it may be assumed that 30 grams per cubic metre is the lower explosive limit for most flammable dusts. Though this may seem to be a very low concentration, in appearance a cloud of dust of such a concentration would resemble a very dense fog. The upper explosive limits are not well defined and have poor repeatability under laboratory test conditions. Since the upper explosive limit is of little practical importance, data for this parameter is rarely available.
The most violent explosions are produced when the proportion of oxygen present is not far removed from that which will result in complete combustion. The range of the explosive concentrations of a dust cloud is not simply a function of the chemical composition of the dust; the limits vary with the size and shape of the particles in the dust cloud. Review various Ignition Sources.
Effects of a Dust Explosion The heat produced by the combustion of the dust particles in a dust explosion and any gases evolved will cause a rapid increase in pressure at the walls of the vessel containing the dust cloud. In factories it is the effect of this pressure wave on relatively weak items of plant and buildings which has caused the deaths and injuries to persons employed in handling materials giving rise to dust explosions.
Further, since the pressure wave produced by the explosion can cause further dust which may have accumulated in the plant or on internal surfaces of buildings to be thrown into suspension in air, additional fuel can be fed to the flame and a disastrous secondary explosion may follow.
Additional consequences following a dust explosion pressure wave are: the fires that may have been started by the dust flame; the implosion effect on the plant and buildings as the pressure within these rapidly returns to normal; the compromise of emergency exit routes and emergency lighting.
For more, visit the Dust Explosion awareness website.
SAFER is jointly administered by:
OUR MISSION
SAFER Council's mission is to assist workers and employers in the BC Forest Industry to improve accident prevention and create a healthy environment, both on and off the job. To reach this safety goal, SAFER has taken a leadership role in the development of safety training sessions for workers.
OUR HISTORY
It is pretty clear to someone just hearing about SAFER that safety is the chief concern of this organization. The name, SAFER, stands for Safety Advisory Foundation for Education and Research.
SAFER was created through broad negotiations between the IWA Canada (now United Steelworkers) and FIR on the coast and the IFLRA in the southern interior for the 1988-1991 master collective agreements in both regions.
SAFER continues to be jointly managed by USW, FIR, and the IFLRA where the industry and the union enjoy equal representation.
Under the leadership of two Co-Chairs selected from the union and industry ranks, the SAFER Council coordinates its safety activities and initiatives under the guideance of eight safety advocate board members and four trustees.
SAFER will celebrate 25 years of creating healthy environments and improving accident prevention for workers and their families in early January 2013.
For both Union and Non-union Health and Safety Information - Click here.
www.fwsn.org
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