When It comes to workplace safety, you can’t understate the importance of a spill response plan. In Australia, it’s a legal need for workplaces to have an emergency plan in place if there is the risk of a chemical or hazardous spill in your workplace. This is put in place to both protect workers and the environment.
But if you’re new to the concept of spill response, workplace safety and why it’s important, you’re in the right place to find out.
What are the Regulations for Spill Management?
To best understand the regulations, you can look into the Australian Standards, but to put it simply, anyone conducting a business in Australia must make sure that provisions are made for possible spills if they use or engage with hazardous chemicals that are classed to pose a threat to human and environmental safety.
Failure to correctly perform this duty can lead to fines for people and businesses as well as jail time if workers are injured or if the environment is significantly harmed.
The Reasons for Having a Spill Response Plan
Prevent Environmental Damage
This is one of the most obvious reasons to have spill repones in place. If you get it wrong, you can end up seeing pollution, fines and your business’s reputation being lost.
Occupational Health & safety
Many chemicals are toxic when handled or stored incorrectly, a spill response can help mitigate these risks to keep workers safe if a spill occurs.
Effective Spill Response
If your workers are well trained in spill response, you can effectively reduce lost time as the spill will be cleared quickly and effectively, making your workplace more productive and circumventing expensive productivity losses that may occur if emergency services need to be called.
This is What Makes Up A Spill Response Plan
Spill response plans are made up of the following components, as follows:
Identification & Reporting: This is where you train workers to know that a spill has occurred, identify which liquid has been spilt and who it should be reported to, whether internal or external.
Protecting Workers & Environment: PPE such as gloves and safety glasses should be worn, and the spill must be handled in a safe manner, to not leak further into drains or to the environment.
Containment & Clean-Up: Now it’s time to clean it up by circling the spill with booms to stop the further spread, and then workers can use absorbents to clean up the remainder of the spill.
Regular Training: this is essential to keep new and incoming workers aware of how to use a spill kit in a timely manner.
Review & Update: Changes to your workplace, legislation and storage can all alter your spill response plan, so make sure to be aware of changes and alter the spill response plan as needed.
Maintenance: Spill kits need maintenance, so make sure that in your spill response plan, there is room for maintaining and checking spill kits as required.
Where Can You Get Help?
No matter what industry you work in, there is a likelihood of a dangerous spill occurring. This is why spill response plans are so necessary, but how do you know if your chemicals pose a risk? This is where Spill Station comes in, not only do they offer spill kits near you, but they also offer Australia’s best risk assessments, to help you understand where hazards may be in your workplace and how to mitigate the risks, and can even supply the solutions as needed.
Contact Spill Station and keep your workplace and Australian wildlife safe.
