One purpose of the OSHA regulations is to help employers provide safe working conditions. However, no matter how safe the conditions are, one unsafe act can produce tragedy. In fact, conditions are never perfectly safe despite the best intentions and most rigorous efforts to make them that way.
Rather than assume conditions are safe, assume they are unsafe. Then methodically check the conditions; your company’s safety program should provide training, checklists, and procedures toward this end. But also use your own senses. Before entering an area, stop and:
- Look. For example, your company has an oil spill clean-up program run by the operators. Look for oil or other slipping hazard anyhow.
- Listen. It’s much better to hear a steam leak than to walk into it.
- Smell. This gives you a chance to detect combustibles combusting or process chemicals leaking.
- Feel. Before opening a door to a transformer vault, battery room, or other place where fire may be present, check whether the door feels hot.
