Preventing Occupational Illness in your Workplace: What You Can Do
Start by having a look at your health and safety program. Ensure that recognizing, assessing and controlling hazards, and WHMIS are key elements in your program and apparent in the way work is done in your workplace.
Audits can help you assess the effectiveness of your health and safety programs. Audits and other help are available through the health and safety associations and other organizations.
Here are some things to consider when auditing your programs.
Recognizing hazards
- Is everyone in your workplace trained to actively participate in recognizing hazards?
- Are health hazards included in your regular workplace inspections?
Assessing hazards
- Have you set standards for exposure controls?
- Are health hazards assessed by measuring exposure levels regularly and comparing them to standards?
- Are findings recorded and acted upon?
Controlling hazards
- When you cannot eliminate health hazards, have you researched and applied substitutions or the most effective controls?
- Do you have a continuous improvement system to improve your standards and controls?
WHMIS
- Is compliance with WHMIS expected in your workplace?
- Do you have a labelling system and are Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) used consistently?
- Are the MSDSs up to date?
Standards
- Do company standards exceed the standards set by law for exposure levels (WHMIS, Occupational Health and Safety Act, Occupational Exposure Limits, Designated Substance Regulations)?
- Do they include documented and communicated safe work practices?
Compliance
- Is monitoring done to ensure everyone is the workplace is complying with the WHMIS regulations, health and safety laws and company standards?
Resources
In addition to the resources listed in this section, Ontario’s health and safety system offers resources, training and services to help workplaces recognize, assess and control hazards, and build, implement and audit health & safety programs, including WHMIS.
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