Chemical safety as it were, encompasses the use, production, transport and handling of chemicals in a safe manner. This simply means that chemical safety professionals are expected to give detail safety procedure for: use, production, transport, and handling of hazardous chemicals. The risky nature of many chemicals to human health may be increased when safety measures or procedures are not put in place, during the use, production, transportation and handling. The International Labour Organization (ILO) reveals that over 1 billion workers worldwide are exposed to hazardous substances, including pollutants, dusts, vapours and fumes. A source from Wikipedia shows that 1.6 million people die every year from exposure or contact with hazardous chemicals. The ILO also, reveals that 1 million workers lose their lives every year, due to exposure of hazardous chemicals. This death results of the people caused by these dangerous chemicals are unacceptable. Hence, the primarily focus of chemical safety is to ensure a chemically safe environment.
A chemical is a substance produced by chemical processes or used in a chemical processes. Also, a chemical is a substance of any material that has definite chemical composition. Chemical substances occur in different forms, which include solids, gases, or liquids etc. Chemical substances may change their forms through chemical reactions. Chemical reaction simply refers to a change in a chemical. Or better still, it’s a process by which one or more elements change to form one or more different elements. Chemical compound has to do with two or more substances or elements combined to form one substance through chemical reactions. Some chemicals exist in nature, e.g. water etc. while other chemicals are produced or made, e.g. chlorine – it’s often used in swimming pools to keep the water clean.
Safety, on the other hand, is the state of being safe, or being protected from any harm or danger. Safety can also refer to all activities in an attempt to reduce hazardous conditions to acceptable minimum at any given place or to eliminate the hazardous conditions that can cause an injury to humans, at any given place. The words “at any given place”, as used here could mean, offices, factories, farms, building sites, construction sites, etc.
Having described briefly the meaning of the words “chemical” and “safety” in the above paragraphs, then it’s equally important to discuss about chemical safety, which is a major part of this article. Chemical safety is used to refer to all activities directed at eliminating or reducing the hazardous chemicals to an acceptable level at the work place. Chemical safety is designed to protect workers from chemical hazards and toxic substances that can affect human health. For instance, hazardous chemicals can affect human health in different ways as in eyes, skin, nose, lungs or respiratory tract irritation. It can influence cancer, and weaken the immune system as well as cause fire outbreaks, etc. Therefore, adequate and explicit information about the identities and the danger of the chemicals to work with must be accessible and easily comprehensible to the average staff. Consequently, this will help the staff to take that necessary safety precautions, at the work place.
Moreover, apart from existing chemicals, different new ones are produced and brought into the market every year, while various factories or companies around the world used these chemicals in large quantity in their daily production processes, consequently, increasing both the risky nature of these dangerous chemicals and the human exposure to them. Therefore, the need for detailed information and easy comprehensive communication from the manufacturers to the importers and to the direct users of the hazardous chemicals on their potential risks, and on the safety precautions or measures to be taken, in the use, in the production, in the transportation and in the handling of such chemicals must not be compromised, so as to eliminate or reduce the risks involved to an acceptable minimum level, in order to protect the human health exposed to these hazardous chemicals in the environment are inevitable. The need for Health Safety and Environment (HSE) professionals and safety education to the staff are equally important at the work place.
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