Who could be exposed to hazardous chemicals at your job site?

A chemical risk assessment is an evaluation of the way the chemicals, substances and materials carried at your workplace could cause harm. By understanding who could be harmed by hazardous substances, you can control the risks associated with those chemicals. This post will help you identify who could be exposed to hazardous chemicals and dangerous goods at your job site, so you can continue working your way through the risk assessment process. 

Jobs that expose you to chemicals 

Most workplaces use some kind of hazardous chemical in their operations. Whether it’s flammable liquids (such as petrol or paint), toxic substances (including pesticides or cleaning products) or another type of hazchem, many sites have a range of chemicals that can cause harm to humans through chemical exposure.  

Some common jobs that may expose workers to harmful substances include: 

• Airline personnel 
• Construction workers 
• Cleaners 
• Farm workers 
• Fire fighters 
• Hospitality personnel 
• Laboratory technicians 
• Manufacturing staff 
• Medical personnel 
• Coal miners 
• Petrol station attendants 
• Waste disposal staff 
• Welders 

… and many more. 

Hazardous chemicals may result in serious health conditions if people are exposed to the chemicals, with some chronic illnesses including lung cancer, reproductive issues, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. 

If your workplace handles, stores or generates any dangerous goods or hazardous chemicals, you’ll need to identify, assess and control the risks that these substances present. 

Let’s now look at the 4 steps to  

Step 1: Identify the hazardous substances and their form 

Get started by identifying each of the hazardous chemicals from the safety data sheets (SDSs). Each SDS will list the chemical’s form (liquid, solid, gas etc) as well as the chemical and physical properties. You’ll also need to consider the hazardous substances generated in the workplace, think wood dust, welding fume, and sewerage. For some of the workplace generated substances there will be no SDS so you’ll need to consider the form of the substance to determine how it could get into a person’s body and cause harm. 

REMEMBER: Some materials and substances are almost harmless in their original form (eg, a block of wood, or a piece of metal) but change during work processes and become hazardous chemicals (wood dust or welding fume). 

Step 2: List each ‘route of exposure’ 

People can become sick, injured or even die due to chemical exposure. If hazardous chemicals enter the bloodstream, they can penetrate major organs or damage the reproductive, nervous and respiratory systems.  

Understanding the route of exposure is an important step in your risk assessment.

Your next step will be to determine how each of the chemicals could affect your workers by looking at how they could be absorbed by the body. 

There are four possible routes of exposure: 

1. Inhalation: Breathing in air-borne chemicals is the most common way hazardous substances enter the body. Which of your chemicals are the form of smoke, mists, gases, vapours, fumes, fibres, powders, and dusts? Do the chemicals have a workplace exposure standard? 
2. Ingestion: Swallowing liquid chemicals can occur when containers are incorrectly labelled or when hands, food, drinks, beards, cigarettes, and utensils are contaminated. There have also been documented workplace accidents where workers have died after accidentally swallowing acid following a burst chemical pipe. Look for chemicals in liquid form, as well as mists and dust particles that could settle and contaminate work areas. 
3. Absorption: Hazardous chemicals may be absorbed through the skin or eyes, causing human harm. Absorption may be via contact with the skin, when chemicals are splashed into the eyes or if substances pass into the blood stream through cuts or abrasions.   
4. Injection: When a sharp object punctures the skin chemicals can be directly injected into the bloodstream. The most obvious method is via a syringe but this can also happen accidentally during work processes that cut and puncture holes.

IMPORTANT: Some chemicals in solid form (as well as certain vapours) can be absorbed through the skin if they are dissolved in moisture on the skin's surface. Always check your SDS for details about the different forms a chemical may take. 

Step 3: Evaluate work processes and who performs them 

Once you understand the different ways each of the chemicals used at the worksite are able to penetrate the human body, you can begin to evaluate the different work processes and who performs them. 

Site employees and contractors 

Start with the employees and contracts who regularly use the chemicals or are working in areas that have airborne concentrations of chemicals in their breathing zones. 

Examples include: 

• Manufacturing staff using chemicals as raw materials in production processes 
• Maintenance staff using chemicals to do repairs 
• Trade contractors installing equipment and machinery 
• Forklift drivers moving packaged chemicals around the job site and into storage areas 
• Cleaning staff decanting chemicals from IBCs into portable containers 
• Truck drivers and heavy machinery operators filling their vehicles from bulk fuel tanks 
• Warehouse operators exposed to vehicle emissions while processing sales orders and loading trucks 
• Laboratory staff mixing and measuring chemicals during experiments and testing 
• New workers and contractors attending a site induction
  

Management, administration and non-operational staff 

How often are administration staff or senior managers present in manufacturing, construction, or other industrial areas of the job site? Are there any circumstances in their own work areas where they could be exposed to hazardous chemicals? 

Examples include: 

• Accounting staff chasing invoices or assisting with stocktaking 
• Administration staff delivering messages and workplace documents 
• Management doing a daily site inspection and meeting with supervisors 
• Senior Management attending a Safety Meeting 
• Marketing teams taking photos or shooting a promo video 

IMPORTANT: You also need to evaluate how the entire site could be affected by a fire, explosion or chemical reactions. Consider a documented example of a chlorine gas bottle explosion in a workshop that also killed administration staff and customers. 

Customers, suppliers, and other site visitors 

What types of industry professionals are likely to visit your worksite? How often? How long will they stay? Will any of the work areas they visit have hazardous chemicals? Who else might turn up? 

There are many types of workers and site visitors that may be exposed to hazardous chemicals.

Examples include: 

• Delivery drivers dropping off raw materials, equipment, and goods for resale 
• Supplier representatives selling products and services 
• Customers picking up their order 
• Government inspectors auditing the site for compliance 
• Industry and Union representatives visiting the site for a meeting 
• Media chasing a story 
• Job applicants attending an interview

IMPORTANT: Don’t forget to consider how the chemicals could affect wildlife, plants, livestock, crops, agricultural lands, neighbouring businesses, and the environment. 

Controlling exposure in jobs with chemical hazards 

Now that you’ve identified everyone who could be harmed by the hazardous chemicals at your workplace, would you like to know exactly how to implement a full risk management methodology? Just download our free eBook How to manage the risk of Hazardous Chemicals in the workplace for full set of guidelines — including our custom designed WHS tools and templates. Download and read it today to achieve chemical safety compliance in your organisation.