(This document is a brief overview of COSHH further more detailed information is available at www.hse.gov.uk.)
What you need to know about COSHH (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health). If you run a small business or are self-employed you need this information to make sure you are protecting your employees. If you run a medium to large sized business where decisions about hazardous substances are more complex you will also need professional advice. Every year thousands of workers are made ill by hazardous substances, contracting diseases such as asthma and dermatitis. These diseases cost millions of pounds each year to replace trained workers, provide disability allowances and medicine.
Hazardous substances include:
• Substances used in everyday work (e.g. cleaning agents, paints, adhesives etc).
• Substances which are generated during work activities (e.g. fumes generated by welding etc).
• Substances which occur naturally (e.g. grain dust).
• Biological agents such as micro-organisms and bacteria. These substances are found in nearly all working environments and can cause anything from mild irritation of the eye to chronic lung disease and in some instances even death.
COSHH Requirements In order to comply with COSHH the following steps need to be taken.
1. Assess the risks
• Identify the hazardous substances present in your workplace and consider the risks that they may have on people’s health.
2. Decide what precautions need to be taken
• If you identify any risks decide on what action you need to take to either remove or reduce them to acceptable levels.
• If you have five or more employees you must keep a record of your findings.
• The record should be made as soon as possible after the assessment and explain the decisions you have taken with regard to whether risks are significant and the need for controlling said risks.
• A record also needs to be made as to what actions your employees and others need to take to ensure adequate control of hazardous substances.
3. Prevent or adequately control exposure
• First try to prevent exposure by changing the process or activity, replacing it with a safer alternative or use it in a safer form e.g. pellets instead of powder.
• If prevention is not reasonably possible, you must adequately control exposure.
• Put in place measures appropriate to the activity and consistent with the risk assessment including:
o Appropriate work processes, systems and engineering controls and provide suitable work equipments and materials.
o Control exposure at the source and reduce the number of exposed employees to a minimum.
o Provide personal protective equipment.
4. Ensure that control measures are used and maintained
• It is your responsibility to ensure that your employees make proper use of the control measures in place and report any defects.
• All controls must be adequately maintained and tested at suitable intervals with a clear and concise record of examinations which is to be kept for a minimum of 5 years.
5. Monitor the exposure
• Under COSHH, you have to measure the concentration of hazardous substances in the air breathed in by your workers where your assessment concludes that:
o There could be a serious health risk if control measures deteriorated or failed;
o exposure limits could be exceeded; or o control measures might not be working correctly.
• However, you do not need to do this if you can show by another method of evaluation that you are preventing or adequately controlling employees’ exposure to hazardous substances. An example of this is an alarm that sounds if hazardous substances are detected.
• Air monitoring must be carried out when employees are exposed to certain substances and processes specified in Schedule 5 of the COSHH Regulations. If it is necessary to carry out personal air monitoring the air sampled should be from the employee’s breathing zone i.e. the space around the workers face where breath is taken.
• As previously mentioned a record of any exposure monitoring must be kept for at least five years.
6. Carry out appropriate health surveillance
• Health surveillance should be carried out in the following circumstances:
o Where an employee is exposed to one or more of the substances in Schedule 6 COSHH and working in one of the related processes, e.g. manufacture of certain compounds of benzene and there is a reasonable likelihood that an identifiable disease or adverse health will result from that exposure;
o where employees are exposed to a substance linked to a particular disease or adverse health effect and there is a reasonable likelihood, under the conditions of the work, of that disease or effect occurring and it is possible to detect the disease or health effect.
• Health surveillance can be carried out by a doctor or trained nurse or in some instance a trained supervisor. A record of health surveillances carried out must be kept for a minimum of 40 years.
7. Prepare plans and procedures to deal with accidents, incidents and emergencies.
• This will apply where the work activity gives rise to a risk of an accident, incident or emergency involving exposure to a hazardous substance, which goes well beyond the risks associated with normal day-to-day work. In such circumstances, you must plan your response to an emergency involving hazardous substances before it happens.
• Preparing procedures and setting up warning and communication systems to enable an appropriate response should any incident occur. Information regarding your emergency procedures needs to be available for all involved to view including the emergency services. Safety drills of your procedures should be practised at regular intervals.
• Should an accident or emergency occur immediate steps must be taken to minimise any harmful effects and restore the situation to normal.
8. Ensure that employees are properly informed, trained and supervised.
• You are required to provide suitable and sufficient information, training and instruction to your employees which should include:
o Names of the substances they work with or could be exposed to and the risks created by such exposure, as well as access to any data sheets that apply to those substances.
o The main findings of your risk assessment.
o Precautions they should take to protect themselves and other employees.
o How to use the personal protective equipment and clothing provided.
o Results of any exposure monitoring and health surveillance, omitting individual employee names.
o Any emergency procedures which need to be followed.
• You should update and adapt the information, training and instruction to take account changes in the type of work carried out or methods used.
• You should also ensure that you provide information etc that is appropriate to the level of risk identified by the assessment and in a manner and form in which it will easily be underst6ood by all employees.
• These requirements are vital. You must ensure your employees understand the risks from the hazardous substances they could be exposed to. Your control measures will not be fully effective if your employees do not know their pupose, how to use them properly or the importance of reporting faults.
