Chemical safety study in a reagent warehouse

Abstract

Chemical safety is a fundamental issue in any place where chemicals are handled because assessing occupational exposure to a chemical agent is essential to determine the importance and need to propose measures to eliminate, reduce and control the risk and protect the worker. The aim of this work was to assess chemical safety in a reagent depot by applying the COSHH Essentials method. Three variables were considered to categorise the risk: intrinsic hazard of the reagent, tendency to pass into the environment (volatility or pulverulence) and quantity of reagent stored. Information on the chemicals was collected from their safety data sheets. The COSHH Essentials analysis identified that 32 % of the reagents worked with fall into hazard category C (toxic reagents), 21 % into category B (harmful), 18 % into category D (very toxic and/or carcinogenic category 2), 16 % into category A (irritating to eyes and/or skin) and 13 % into category E (carcinogenic category 1A and 1B). Seventeen percent of the stored reagents are in risk level 4, which represents the highest risk level, as this is where the most hazardous chemical reagents are located. The results obtained show that there is a high risk of toxic chemicals in the warehouse. It is necessary to be aware of these factors and to control them and apply all relevant security measures.