Risk Assessment and Deployment for Safety Showers and Eyewash Stations in the Process Plant Industry.

Jae-Young Choi,Sang-Hoon Byeon

doi:10.3390/ijerph18168707

Abstract

Safety showers and eyewash stations are equipment used for primary washing if their operator is exposed to hazardous chemicals. Therefore, safety showers and eyewash stations should be installed to ensure operator safety in process plants with excessive hazardous chemicals. International guidelines related to safety showers and eyewash stations are introduced in ANSI Z358.1, BS EN 15154, and German DIN 12899-3:2009, but only mechanical specifications regarding safety showers and eyewash stations are suggested. As such, there are currently no engineering guidelines, books, or technical journal papers requiring safety showers or eyewash stations and their efficient deployment. Thus, this study conducted risk assessment from an industrial hygiene perspective, suggesting which process equipment requires a safety shower and eyewash, including their economical and efficient deployment for operator safety. In industry, safety showers and eyewash stations are considered part of the process safety field; this study attempted to contribute to the safety improvement of operators by applying risk assessment of the industrial hygiene field. More studies are needed that contribute to operators’ safety by incorporating industrial hygiene fields for other process safety fields, including safety showers and eyewash stations.

Highlights

Safety showers and eyewash stations are installed as the primary protection if an operator is exposed to hazardous chemicals [1]
Installing safety showers and eyewash stations requires the cost of facility itself, the cost of material and construction to set up utility water pipe for operation of this facility, and the cost of the system to increase the capacity of utility water
Hazardous chemicals, safety showers eyewash stations for process plantstoare widely supported by engineering books, and technical must be installed ensure operators’

Summary

Introduction

Safety showers and eyewash stations are installed as the primary protection if an operator is exposed to hazardous chemicals [1]. International guidelines for safety showers and eyewash stations include ANSI Z358.1, BS EN 15154, and German DIN. These guidelines only offer mechanical specifications for safety showers and eyewash stations and do not provide any information on which process equipment is protected by safety showers and eyewash stations. Equipment Association states that safety showers and eyewash stations should be deployed through risk assessment but do not provide detailed guidelines on how this should be implemented [2]. This study suggests a guideline determining the type of process equipment that is protected by a safety shower and eyewash station and an efficient methodology for deploying it for economic efficiency and safety

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion