Guidelines for Proper Use and Eyewash and Safety Showers

Posted by alexstephen on January 24th, 2014

When you are working in a hazardous area, you will have to be alert all the time. Accidents do happen and they will not tell you when they are about to happen. As a practice, you will have to be wearing your personal protective equipment all the time when you are in the hazardous area. Also, you will have to make sure that you tell others to wear the safety equipment all the time. If you follow the safety procedures and processes in the right manner, you will never have any problems in the industrial or laboratory areas.

Understanding the need for safety equipment and using them during the times of emergency are important aspects of industrial safety. If you don’t find the need for safety equipment, you will never know even if they exist. One of the most commonly used safety equipment is the eyewash and safety shower. These emergency equipments are kept at strategic locations on the factory floor in such a way that they are easily accessible.

As a worker or laboratory technician, it is your duty to know where the safety equipment is located. If you are not aware of the location, you will have to find out from your supervisor. As a best practice, the shower or eyewash equipment needs to be there at a distance of a few feet from where you are going to work. In other words, the safety equipment needs to be there at 10 seconds of unobstructed travel from the work stations.

If your work area is too messy or overloaded with cans or other material, you will have to make sure that it is cleared. During times of emergency, you don’t want to be in a situation where you have to clear materials or goods to get to the emergency equipment. If you have eye wash stations, then they will be valid only if they have two orifices. If there is a deluge hose kept for the purpose of eye protection equipment, then you will have to immediately discard it because most safety governing bodies around the world don’t approve it as a safety equipment.

Deluge hoses are only meant for cleaning purposes and you will have to make sure that you don’t use them during any emergency situations. Deluge hoses are powerful equipments and they are generally used for cleaning glass or glassware. In fact, the deluge hoses may also not be sanitary.

During emergencies, you will have to rush to the proper emergency equipment. Even if the sink faucets are closer, you will have to still rush to the safety showers or eyewashes. During you induction training, you will also get training on how to use the safety equipments such as the portable eyewash. If you are not understanding the use of the emergency equipments, then you will have to make sure that you ask the right person. By and large, highly skilled trainers are invited to give industrial safety training to the workers who will be working in hazardous areas.