Splash Protection Required

Process: The injection of an oxidizing agent into a groundwater remediation injection well.

Incident: An unexpected failure of a pipe fitting resulted in the unforeseen discharge of pressure, leading to an oxidizing agent to spray into a well technician's face. Although the technician was wearing safety glasses, the force caused the oxidizing agent to spray underneath the safety glasses and in to the technician's eyes. The technician was quickly helped by others to an eye-wash station where his eyes were flushed with water and he was checked for personal injury. As a precautionary measure, the worker was taken to an emergency room. Fortunately, the accident only resulted in minor discomfort and the medical professional decided that no medical treatment was required. The technician was ready to return to work the next working day.

Exploration: The investigation revealed that the injection well coupling that failed was not created well and did not use compatible materials. The analysis also concluded that the effect of the failure was compounded by a Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) that required basic safety glasses but not goggles in the course of this stage of the task. Although goggles had been utilized in other equivalent injection jobs, this protection had been overlooked.

Corrective Actions: As a result of this accident, revisions have been made to engineering specifications to ensure incompatible materials were not utilized in the future. Also, the JHA for the injection of oxidizing agents was revised. All staff doing work on chemical oxidation projects are actually required to don full splash protection all through injection operations.

All accidents are preventable and this one should have been, yet all too often human error results in unintended consequences and accidents. Your JHA program must include asking the question of what could go wrong and giving controls to stop injury in the event it does. What caught our eye in this incident was that splash protection had been utilized before, but that by some means this information was not conveyed to others. JSABuilder captures your knowledge of hazards and controls by storing this data available for you and your colleagues to utilize again and again, making for a more powerful JHA program and a safer workplace.

For more information on the best way to create Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) worksheets visit JSABuilder.com