Safe, Efficient, Profitable: A Worker Safety Podcast
Joe and Jen Allen of Allen Safety LLC take their combined 40+ years of worker safety, OSHA, EPA, production, sanitation, and engineering experience in Manufacturing Plants including Harvest Plants/Packers, Case Readies and Further Processing Plants, Food Production Plants, Feed Mills, Grain Elevators, Bakeries, Farms, Feed Lots, and Petro-Chemical and bring you their top methods for identifying risk, preventing injuries, conquering the workload, auditing, managing emergencies and catastrophic events, and working through OSHA citations. They're breaking down real safety opportunities, safety citations, and emergency situations from real locations, and discussing realistic solutions that can actually be implement based on their personal experiences spending 40+ weeks in the field every year since 2001. Joe and Jen are using all of that experience to provide a fresh outlook on worker safety by providing honest, (no sponsors here!) and straight forward, easy to understand safety coaching with actionable guidance to move your safety program forward in a way that provides tangible results.
Safe, Efficient, Profitable: A Worker Safety Podcast
#49: How to Manage A Chemical Leak & Return To Normal: HAZMAT Explained
Hazmat Response Phases and Chemical Leaks - Navigating Emergency Situations
Introduction:
In this insightful YouTube episode, the hosts delve into the stages of a hazmat response, covering crucial aspects of handling chemical leaks. The discussion unfolds with an overview of the decision to establish a hazmat team, emphasizing the importance of understanding the chemicals present at a location.
Chapter 1: Initial Response Planning
The hosts stress the need to establish an evacuation plan, citing examples from a food plant setting. Specific chemicals like CO2, nitrogen, and ammonia are highlighted as crucial considerations in the planning phase. The hosts emphasize the importance of addressing chemicals in the Emergency Action Plan (EAP) and deciding when evacuation is necessary.
Chapter 2: Activation and Investigation
Exploring the activation phase, the hosts introduce the concept of a bell curve, using ammonia as an example. They detail the chemical-specific nature of hazmat responses, focusing on factors like liquid or vapor presence. Real-life experiences, such as a past liquid leak during pregnancy, highlight the need for specific response protocols.
Chapter 3: Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Decisions
The hosts share their opinions on selecting PPE, emphasizing the significance of practical knowledge over numerical values. They provide insights into deciding the appropriate gear for different chemicals, using their experiences with ammonia as an example. Practical considerations, like skin exposure and gear adjustments during tasks, are discussed.
Chapter 4: Hazmat Response Implementation
The hosts discuss the actual implementation of a hazmat response, covering aspects like time-sensitive decision-making, gear selection, and potential challenges during entry into the hot zone. Real-world scenarios are highlighted to underscore the importance of agility and adaptability in hazmat responses.
Chapter 5: Releasing the Floor - Post-Response Steps
Transitioning to the post-response phase, the hosts share their favorite analogy of turning off the garden hose but still dealing with residual water. They detail the steps involved in releasing the floor back to normal operations, including ventilation, media readings, and managing contaminated items.
Chapter 6: Return to Normal Operations
The hosts provide a detailed breakdown of the return to normal operations phase, covering essential tasks like venting, media readings, and handling contaminated items. They emphasize the importance of rotating crews, transferring command, and addressing the various challenges that may arise during this phase.
Chapter 7: Training and Preparedness
The hosts stress the necessity of incorporating hazmat training into incident command and hazmat tech training. They underscore the importance of understanding specific chemicals in a facility, beyond general guidelines like EPA or railcar training.
Conclusion:
The episode concludes with an invitation to connect with the hosts on social media, where they share live responses, drills, articles, and training insights. Viewers are encouraged to attend the International Roofing Expo (IAR) in March, where one of the hosts will be speaking.
Keywords:
Hazmat response, chemical leaks, emergency action plan, evacuation, hazmat team, personal protective equipment, PPE decisions, hazmat implementation, return to normal operations, hazmat training, incident command, social media, IIAR, Refrigeration, Orlando, Florida
Ages of hazmat response, chemical leaks, all that good stuff. Here's how they flow.
Speaker 2:Here they go.
Speaker 1:Here we go, here we go, here we go.
Speaker 2:All right. So now you decided to have a hazmat team and you got some kind of chemicals it could be any kind of chemical at your location and first thing you gotta do because you gotta figure out what a response is To me my response is there's an evacuation number in your emergency action plan of when you're gonna evacuate your floors. This is for any chemical right, Any chemical, any chemicals You're supposed to, in your EAP already address what chemicals you have and how you're gonna manage those and when to evacuate.
Speaker 1:So first thing, From a food plant. This is we should have this for CO2. We should have this for nitrogen.
Speaker 2:Sanitation chemicals.
Speaker 1:We should have this for sanitation chemicals. We should have it for ammonia. Yep. Those are the top ones. Those should be addressed.
Speaker 2:All right, so now we've got a chemical, we're gonna evacuate. Now we've got to go do something and we have to define what that something is, when this plan is gonna kick in. If it's a cleanup and kind of calling somebody, then maybe this plan doesn't kick in. But if we're gonna start putting on gear and start dealing with the leak and start turning off valves or doing an offensive attack, you're in a full hazmat mode at that moment.
Speaker 1:That's yep. Something spilled or leaked it shouldn't have and I've gotta put gear on.
Speaker 2:I'm not talking about draining oil, paul, not talking about line break, where it's normal. I'm talking about it gets, starts getting crazy.
Speaker 1:This is not maintenance tasks, this is if a maintenance task goes terribly wrong. Maybe it goes wrong.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You do a line break and you do it. Fine, it's not gonna happen. You do a line break.
Speaker 1:When it just comes out real quick, you do a line break on the wrong side. Well, now you got a problem. There we go. So that's where.
Speaker 2:So, first thing, you have to break down at your location when your team is gonna be activated, yep, when you're gonna have a response, and that includes internal, external, all right. The second one we're gonna look at is now it's inactive.
Speaker 1:So basically, you say- Somebody called, said we got a problem, we did an investigation, we put the plan in place.
Speaker 2:Right. So basically you have a bell curve. So you've got like for ammonia be zero to 25. You've activated 25. So at 25, our teams start kicking in. Now we're gonna have mask meters doing tasks, we're gonna do whatever that is in our corner plan, and then we're gonna do that up to a certain level and then we're gonna change our gear again. But the thing you need to know is but has to be chemical specific. It can't just be chemical liquid or vapor. It can't be in a room or out of room. It's gotta be the way that chemical lives.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I'll give you an example. I am not going to use the same protocols for nitrogen or CO2 that I use for ammonia. Right they are. Both can be in a liquid form and they can be in a vapor form.
Speaker 2:And they both can be hard to breathe.
Speaker 1:Yes, so, but they have different levels, and so what it really boils down to it deals with the ideal H or that specific chemical is.
Speaker 2:Chlorine is different again and the chemical itself. So, for example, jen had a leak years ago she was working as an IC while she was pregnant and it was a liquid lead, but it wasn't a chemical that usually gases off crazy. But they said to wear different things they would normally wear based on the camera. So that's, it is not just liquid of a bar automatically, person man, it's gotta be based on the chemical where stored. You gotta understand all that.
Speaker 1:And so the reason why he brings up that I was also pregnant at the time is because we hear a lot of times providing training and acknowledging that we're having a response happen and that we are having a team is scary and we just say that part to be it shouldn't be if it's scary to do it if it's scary. We're doing it wrong and we're not drilling enough.
Speaker 2:Now there are people that say we have different levels of PPE, we're gonna wear different stage and we'll talk about here in a second. But the thing you need to know is it's not about the levels, it's the physical way it goes to your body. It's not a number. So to tell me that something reacts to me at 4000 or 5000, whatever, what I want to know is when my skin start burning, because that's when I got to start wearing different levels of PPE.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when am I causing harm to the employee? And that is different per person. Absolutely so, so I've got to think of that.
Speaker 2:I got to put that buffer in place, alright. So now my number one is I've got to figure out I'm gonna respond and when I'm gonna actually do it. Number two now I got to start getting my gear and decide liquid vapor where it is. What am I gonna wear now? Number three is now I'm gonna put some gear on. So now I'm gonna wear level B or level A or level C, whatever, whatever grade it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now I want to say, disclaimer that what we're getting ready to talk about is our opinion our opinion. I understand there are people out there who have a different opinion and want to go a different path, and that's fine. This is based on our experience of what works in the field over a whole bunch of different events.
Speaker 2:So, for example, I saw a few days ago a location told me that 5000 person million. They wear a particular gear and I'm like, okay, but I wear that gear at 300 person million. Now I can justify why we're 300 because I've done so many live events, I can see how it moved and work. And I asked him where did you get the number from? And that's it. So you know I've got to explain to you whatever gear you decide to wear or wherever you buy or whatever you, you have to be able to justify why that number is real. 5000 for most of my chemicals except for CO2. In a room, if it was 5000 ammonia, 5000 chlorine or 5000 some of my sanitation chemicals, it's going to be burning and hurting me. It's completely different response than we're talking about.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm gonna tell you, joe and I both been exposed to ammonia while we've been doing training and other chemicals actually chemicals too. While we've been doing training. A leak has happened just by happenstance, but not really cause. We're in a plan almost every day and they happen, all the time, but I will tell you I had problems at a number that was significantly less than 5,000. And you've gotta think about what kind of skin is exposed you can have a hundred.
Speaker 1:In the different types of equipment and gear that you're putting on. So in a level B I may still have necklines and stuff exposed because it's not vapor protective.
Speaker 2:So if I take ammonia, for example, I start wearing a level A's at 300 because it's vapor. I'm just gonna do that and I may wear it lower if I think it's gonna be crazy in the room.
Speaker 1:Well, it could get worse, really fast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if I'm going in to do a task and that task turns off particular valve and that valve is tends to get crazy, I may just go level X. I don't wanna worry about it.
Speaker 1:Well, there's also the concept of you have no idea what it's been doing since you- 20 minutes getting ready, stop.
Speaker 2:yeah, 40 minutes or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:How long does it take you to do the response and actually make entry into the hot zone? A lot of things could have happened by then, and if you crack that door and you're like, whoa that's-.
Speaker 2:Too much.
Speaker 1:That's too much. Well, now you have to go back and change gear and get redressed.
Speaker 2:So that's a waste of time. Now it's still leaking.
Speaker 1:What are we doing?
Speaker 2:If you listen to other episodes, I don't want the leaks to go over an hour. Basically I don't want anybody to get hurt and I don't want to lose any product and I don't want to hurt the community. So that's my first rule. So if I have to decide PPE and I decide, I look at the room we're going into. And if we're going into the room and it's set chemical number one and I know that chemical, well, I may change my PPE because I've dealt with those and I know I don't want it to keep going for hours. I want to get it done.
Speaker 1:Well, I think part of it's. Also having more gear is like scary and I'm like I wear a level laced, I mean. I like level laced. Personally, I'm more comfortable in them as opposed to level B, is I think they get really hot.
Speaker 2:I'm also a little claustrophobic. I actually do better in A's, which is weird, but I don't like the tape as much on the gloves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everything's all tapes in here.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, so, but you need to decide that now. I will tell you, as Jen said, people have different opinions about it. We're only telling you what we saw for real, because what works?
Speaker 1:all the time.
Speaker 2:That's it, no matter what, whether you gotta do some weather and rain and snow, yeah, so I'm just telling you you gotta break that down. You gotta break down the peepee and what you're actually gonna wear or not, and don't get caught up in someone telling you he's not gonna be doing it. So if they've never fought that chemical, don't let him tell you, because we don't. I don't give you advice on chemicals. I don't manage, I'm like that's not my.
Speaker 1:I have to know that's my limit, that's not my lane. Yeah, if people give you advice, I think it's fair to always ask how do you know? How many have you done Well? Have you done it personally?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of entities out there who train in this world but have never done a response. I'm only telling you what we fought for real and what happened real time. I can't speak for anything else. All right. So then the number four here is we got to release the floor sometimes, so what you have to do is my favorite part. You got this part where you're going up and this thing's getting a little crazy, so you're wearing some gear and then you add some more gear, and now you've got the crazy over, but it's still bad.
Speaker 1:We stopped the leak, the spill, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:Basically, we turned off the garden hose in the living room, but there's still water everywhere.
Speaker 1:Great analogy.
Speaker 2:Yes, so we still got it. There's still water and if it's a chemical gives off vapor, you still got vapor. The leak may not be going with it, but there's still a lot going on.
Speaker 1:So just as a note usually this is the point the fire leaves, so the rest of this you're on your own.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this could be literally four or five days.
Speaker 1:So here we go.
Speaker 2:This is not clean up, though no, we're still in the trying to release the floor, and even we're not running.
Speaker 1:We're not running yet, so here's kind of the list of things that go on when you're trying to release the floor back to normal operation. So you're going to have to vent it out, and this could be for a while, based on what your airflow is. If I'm having a leak in my blast freezers, that is completely different than I'm having a leak in my compressor rooms, where I have built it built in ventilation and I can open garage doors and everything else.
Speaker 1:So, based on where this was in your facility, the ventilation time could be a couple hours, it could be days. So you've got to kind of plan for that and figure out what's going on. We're taking meteor readings and we're going and basically doing sweeps of the area to see how we do it and we're doing and those people have got to be in gear. We've got to figure out what we're going to do with all the contaminated stuff. So we got to be calm people that can come and pick it up if we've got a service for that. We've got to be making sure that we're rotating those crew members because again this could be, we're in a second shift, next shift, third shift, we could be 24 hours.
Speaker 1:I can't keep an incident commander for 48 hours straight without letting them go home. So this is the moment that you find out that we trained enough ICs because if I've still got people in a place that's got bad air and they're wearing gear, that has to be under incident command because of All the medical things and liability going on there. So we've got rotating crews transferring command. We've got a render out product if it's contaminated and saturated with whatever the spill was or the chemical was. They may have to be wearing masks to be able to render out that product, which means it may not be your rendering folks.
Speaker 1:It may end up being part of your hazmat team members doing that sanitation may bring in we've got sanitation and now you've got to decide Well, how low can the levels be before we start introducing sanitation chemicals, because we don't want to have another evacuation trigger. That has happened in the past. Now we got all kinds of problems we start over from scratch. Then we've got to make sure that if we've got contractors in there because again this could be going on over several days Do they have the right kind of training, fit test physicals, can they wear a gear? Did they bring a mask, validate the insurance piece and all that stuff. That's all going on. So all of these return to normal operation steps based on the chemical we're talking about, those should be in the return to normal section under your EAP. And if you've got questions, reference episode 31, where I break down in detail all of this information of how to structure your EAP, which includes this section.
Speaker 2:All right, episode 4 talks about some of this. You want Michael to set a little more details.
Speaker 1:Yep. So and again, if this is not covered in your incident command training and this is not covered in your hazmat tech training, then we still have to get the data out there and train our folks on what we expect them to do, if I'm trained on EPA or rail, car or whatever guidelines there are, but I've never been trained on the chemical of my plant.
Speaker 2:I still can be trained in chemical my plant. I still can be trained in the levels in the gear I'm gonna wear for my chemical and how to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So all right so you can see us on social media. You can see some of these live responses and drills and all kinds of really cool stuff that we may post on there about Different articles and some photos from our training that we do, and so you can find us. Alan safety LLC Is our handle on tick tock on Instagram, facebook. You can find us there. Otherwise, joe and I are both on LinkedIn. You can connect with us there, joe Allen, jen Allen, and Hopefully I'm seeing yet I am in March, orlando, visit me. I'm speaking Monday, so hope to see you there. Come, say hi and ask whatever questions you got, and that's it for this week. Thank you, take care everybody. Have a safe week.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to Safe, efficient, profitable a Worker Safety Podcast. If you're looking for more in-depth discussions or step-by-step solutions on all of the different safety and regulatory topics, please visit us at wwwallonsafetycoachingcom for web-based virtual coaching and training, or at wwwallon-safetycom to book our team for on-site services, training sessions, to order merchandise, to learn more about our team and what services we provide in the field, or just simply to request a topic for us to cover on our next podcast, if you found today's podcast helpful and would like to support our podcast further. Please help us by subscribing, liking and sharing this podcast with anyone that could benefit from the information we cover here, as that helps us to continue to put out this free content. Thank you so much for your support.
