When you have a vested interest in an industrial business, it’s essential to remain up to date on the latest efforts and options available to protect and promote your interests meaningfully. You must work to consistently maintain the health and safety of your industrial employees, as well as protect and maintain the industrial equipment, products, and workspaces. Suppose you have enclosed spaces at your industrial facility. In that case, educating yourself on the various potential risks to health and safety associated with these tight, small, and otherwise modest workspaces is essential. Enclosed spaces at a range of industrial facilities can pose some unique but potentially severe health and safety risks. Confined space safety is genuinely essential and beneficial.
Industrial workspaces can pose several serious health and safety risks to employees. If one or more of these industrial workspaces is enclosed and otherwise confined, these same risks can effectively increase or pose more severe risks with greater impacts on your valuable industrial business and its financial wellness and ultimate success. Some of the top health and safety hazards include oxygen deprivation or asphyxiation owing to the presence of deadly gasses. These enclosed spaces may have boilers, tanks, vats, vaults, kilns, silos, sewers, pipelines, manure pits, double hulls, storage bins, pumping stations, vessels, sumps, pits, and manholes. In this article, we’ll discuss safety equipment for enclosed spaces to better ensure the safety of workers.
Confined Space Safety
When you have industrial employees at your facility or facilities engaging in work activities in or around enclosed spaces and pieces of equipment, it’s vital to establish and promote worker health and safety. Confined space safety involves testing potential confined spaces for a lack of oxygen, testing these spaces for toxic or hazardous gasses, properly ventilating spaces against harmful or deadly toxins and other airborne hazards, securing access points against entry, and placing and maintaining signs to identify a workspace as enclosed or confined. The layout, technology, and equipment used on a consistent basis in these at-risk spaces can make a significant impact on the severity of safety risks. Confined space safety can be better ensured and maintained through consistent safety measures and equipment.
There are a number of impactful hazards to be aware of and negate including engulfment or suffocation by a loose solid or liquid stored in silos or hoppers, fire hazards from present flammable dust or gasses, and physical and mechanical hazards. Severe physical and mechanical safety hazards for confined spaces include those related to heat, cold, noise, vibration, radiation, electricity, sloping floors or walls, structural hazards, collapse, falling debris, moving parts of equipment, entanglement, inadequate lighting, slips, engulfment, or falls. In addition to these confined space hazards, your industrial employees can also be at risk when rescuing someone trapped in a confined space. To better ensure and maintain health and safety in and around enclosed spaces, safety education and initiatives are vital.
Safety Equipment List
When working to negate or reduce the health and safety risks that confined spaces present, a safety equipment list can make a significant difference. With a quality safety equipment list that properly and accurately reflects your needs and interests, you can better decide what safety equipment for confined spaces you need. Confined space equipment includes any system or tool that aids, protects, or rescues an employee working in a confined space. A confined space is any enclosed area that’s large enough for a worker to enter and effectively perform specific specialized jobs and work activities. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the three criteria for confined space classification are: limited options for exit and entry, not intended for continuous occupancy, and large enough for entry and work activities.
The types of equipment to consider for confined space safety includes radios, signs, helmets, manhole pumps, gas monitors, and retrieval gear. You can also consider equipment for ventilation, communication, rescue, descent and retrieval, gas and chemical detection and monitoring,and personal protection. Any tool that effectively and efficiently helps an industrial worker to operate equipment and perform their industrial work activities efficiently and safely within confined spaces is considered confined space equipment. Confined space equipment can be used in various industries, including gas and oil, power generation, mining, maritime, wastewater management, and construction.
Confined Space Equipment to Ensure Worker Safety
When you need the highest quality, reliable, and durable enclosed space safety equipment, you can trust the Chicago team at Singer Safety to provide you with the very best. Some of the top pieces of confined space equipment includes noise control systems, industrial curtains, vinyl strip doors, welding and safety screens, fire safety equipment, automotive curtain systems, and more. This equipment can provide impactful protection against asphyxiation, oxygen deprivation, severe noise, fires, chemicals, fumes, and other exposure. Connect with us today to explore your options!