PU635 Unit 10 Safety Program Document Example

The Plant's Own Program, Not a Report About It: A Unit 10 Safety and Health Program Document for a Composite Bakery, Built on Seven Core Elements and Pointing Each One Back to the Unit Where It Was Worked Out

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

PU635: Survey of Environmental and Occupational Health

Unit 10 Safety Program Document

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Corliss Street Bakery, its managers and its dates are composite; the program elements, the standards named and the research cited are real.

Policy Statement

Corliss Street Bakery commits to preventing injury and illness among everyone who works in the plant, including workers supplied by staffing agencies and contractors. The program manager has authority to stop any task that presents an imminent hazard, and a budget line of 85,000 dollars for the first year. Signed, the plant manager. Reviewed each January.

Element One: Management Leadership

Commitments: a named program manager, the production manager, at 0.25 of her time; safety as the first item at the weekly production meeting; the capital requests in Element Four placed on the next budget. Responsibility: the plant manager. Evidence: minutes of the weekly meeting, and the budget approved in January.

Element Two: Worker Participation

Commitments: a safety committee of eight, with four members elected by workers, including at least one from night sanitation and one agency worker; paid time for meetings; a near-miss report form in English and Spanish at every station, which can be submitted without a name. Responsibility: the program manager and the agency lead. Evidence: committee minutes and the count of near misses reported each month. The walkthrough found the night shift the least visible part of the plant, and this element exists partly to fix that. A safety committee without a night sanitation member would have reproduced the blind spot the walkthrough found, so the seat is written into the program rather than left to elections.

Element Three: Hazard Identification and Assessment

Commitments: the twenty-three-row hazard inventory from Unit 2, kept as a live document and updated after any change in equipment, product or staffing; a full walkthrough by the committee every six months, one by day and one by night; exposure sampling for flour dust, enzyme, diacetyl and noise as set out in Units 3, 5 and 8, repeated after controls are installed. Responsibility: the program manager, with an outside industrial hygienist for sampling. Evidence: the dated inventory, walkthrough reports and sampling results posted for workers.

Element Four: Hazard Prevention and Control

Commitments, with owners and dates carried from earlier units and revised to agree with one another.

1. Flour dust: compressed-air hoses removed from production and HEPA vacuums issued, week 1; granulated improver, week 2; bag-dump station with exhaust hood and sack compactor, month 2; metered dusters on both make-up lines, month 3; divider oil trial on buns, weeks 3 and 4. Owners: maintenance, purchasing, production.

2. Sack handling: pallet lift table with the dump station, month 2; 25-pound rye sacks from month 2. Owner: purchasing. The recalculated lifting index in Unit 7 is below 1.0 at both ends of the lift with these changes.

3. Diacetyl: product team decision on removing butter flavoring by month 2; if flavoring stays, a closed kettle lid with an addition port and local exhaust by month 3, and any substitute flavoring accepted only with a full composition and no alpha-diketones. Owner: product manager.

4. Hazardous energy: locks, procedures and training for every agency sanitation worker before their next shift on a machine. Owner: sanitation lead with the agency.

5. Noise: full-shift dosimetry at the bun bagger in month 1, then the hearing conservation program if results reach the action level. Owner: program manager.

6. Combustible dust: weekly wet wiping of overhead ledges, and a dust hazard analysis commissioned in the first year. Owner: maintenance.

7. Guarding: the cooling spiral nip point guarded and divider jam clearing moved under lockout, month 1. Owner: maintenance.

Element Five: Education and Training

Commitments: the Unit 9 package for night sanitation, delivered in English and Spanish with a demonstration; hazard communication training for every worker, with safety data sheets reachable on every shift; respirator training under the written program for the interim in sack tipping. Responsibility: the program manager, with the agency for agency workers. Evidence: sign-in sheets and the first-week observation records. Training content is cross-referenced to the Unit 9 appendix rather than repeated here, because engaging, hands-on training does more than long documents do (Burke et al., 2006).

Element Six: Program Evaluation and Improvement

Commitments: leading indicators reviewed monthly, including dump station airflow readings logged, near misses reported, observed vacuum use on nights and percentage of agency workers trained before their first shift; lagging indicators reviewed quarterly, including recordable injuries, restricted-duty days and new respiratory symptoms reported. Injury counts in a plant of 186 people move too slowly to steer decisions month to month, which is why leading indicators come first. Repeat flour dust sampling after the controls is judged against the inhalable level at which bakery studies found sensitization risk becoming negligible (Houba et al., 1998). Responsibility: the safety committee. Evidence: a one-page monthly dashboard.

Element Seven: Communication and Coordination With Host Employers, Contractors and Staffing Agencies

Commitments: a written agreement with the staffing agency stating which training each party provides, who issues locks and personal protective equipment, who records injuries, and how the agency is told about hazard changes; contractors briefed on the hazard inventory before starting work. Responsibility: the plant manager and the agency's account manager. Evidence: the signed agreement and contractor sign-in records.

Written Subprograms Required by Specific Standards

1. Hearing conservation: pending dosimetry results.

2. Respiratory protection: drafted now, and in force on the day sack tippers are first fitted for respirators.

3. Hazardous energy control: written, being extended to agency workers.

4. Hazard communication: written, being revised for night access and Spanish.

Annual Review Calendar

January, policy and budget. March, hazard inventory and night walkthrough. May, training records. July, sampling review. September, day walkthrough and agency agreement. November, evaluation of indicators and next year's priorities.

Limits of This Document

Following this program is not offered as proof that any standard is met. It describes what Corliss Street will do, who will do it and how the plant will know. Compliance is judged by others; the program is judged by whether the night crew uses vacuums, the dump station draws air, and the next sample shows less flour in the air than the last. The structure follows OSHA's recommended practices for safety and health programs, which are advisory rather than a rule (Occupational Safety and Health Administration [OSHA], 2016).

Appendices

A. Hazard inventory table, Unit 2, updated. B. Lifting calculations, Unit 7. C. Training package, Unit 9. D. Sampling plans, Units 3 and 5. E. Standards table, Unit 8.

References

Burke, M. J., Sarpy, S. A., Smith-Crowe, K., Chan-Serafin, S., Salvador, R. O., & Islam, G. (2006). Relative effectiveness of worker safety and health training methods. American Journal of Public Health, 96(2), 315-324. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2004.059840

Houba, R., Heederik, D., & Doekes, G. (1998). Wheat sensitization and work-related symptoms in the baking industry are preventable: An epidemiologic study. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 158(5), 1499-1503. https://doi.org/10.1164/ajrccm.158.5.9803055

Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (2016). Recommended practices for safety and health programs (OSHA 3885). U.S. Department of Labor.