Safe, Efficient, Profitable: A Worker Safety Podcast

Sanitation's Top Danger Zones (And What To Do About Them)

• Episode 81

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In this episode we dive into what we believe to be sanitation's top risks.  As always, these are one take, so they're raw with no scripts, and no idea what the other host will say.  We hope you enjoy, including the brief detour into Joe's fear of heights and Glacier National Park... If it helped you, please like and share, it truly does help!  Full episode description/summary below: 

In this episode of Safe. Efficient. Profitable, the hosts dig into what sanitation safety really looks like when the plant shuts down, production leaves, and the “normal rules” quietly change. This isn’t a textbook discussion of OSHA buzzwords — it’s a hard-earned, experience-driven breakdown of the risks that actually hurt people during sanitation.

Rather than rattling off every possible hazard, the conversation focuses on the top three sanitation safety risks the hosts see over and over again in real facilities — plus one bonus risk that often gets ignored entirely.

1. Elevated Work: 
The number one risk? Elevated work during sanitation. Not the clean, planned kind with proper lifts and fall protection — but the improvised kind that happens when equipment was never designed to be cleaned.

2. Lockout/Tagout Isn’t Simple 

Sanitation introduces multiple risks at the same time, and lockout procedures that work during the day don’t always hold up at night. The hosts stress the importance of evaluating how lockout is actually performed, not just whether a policy exists.

3. Training: The Control That Fails Quietly

Why didn’t they pick confined space or ladder safety as a top risk? Because in their experience, training is the real control behind all of it.
Training needs to address the job function, not just the task. Workers need to know what to do when things don't go as planned or the unexpected happens. 

Bonus Risk: Sleep, Fatigue, and Real Life
The hosts feel that fatigue has to be treated as a real safety variable, not an afterthought. Night-shift sanitation can’t be managed exactly like day-shift production — buffers and controls need to reflect human limits.

The Bottom Line

Sanitation is a different animal. Different risks. Different timing.  If you want safer outcomes, you have to evaluate sanitation on its own terms.

As always, the hosts encourage listeners to take what’s helpful, leave the rest, and share the episode with anyone who might benefit — especially those who haven’t had these experiences yet.

Key Takeaways

Elevated work during sanitation is often improvised and underestimated

Lockout/tagout becomes more complex at night with multiple energy sources

Most sanitation incidents trace back to training gaps, not rule-breaking

Training must cover job function, not just task steps

Fatigue and sleep deprivation are real, measurable sanitation risks

Sanitation cannot be managed like production — it requires its own lens

This episode is intended for educational purposes.  Solutions offered are not designed to take the place of an attorney or medical professional, and should not be taken as legal or medical advice.  It is recommended that viewers consult a safety consultant, medical provider or an occupational safety legal team as applicable to help navigate their specific circumstances.  

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome back, everybody. We haven't done we did like pros and cons of sanitation some chemical and SDS. This one's existing.

SPEAKER_00:

I wasn't, but that was you by yourself before my awesome.

SPEAKER_01:

So now we're doing a couple of maybe top three, we'll call it that. But basically, we may have a bonus, maybe four. Who knows? All right, top three uh risk of sanitation safety. One elevated work.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So I have been to some plants where it seems like everything somehow is elevated to clean. And you're like, how does this happen? You know, and then you go to some plants where you're like, how we get to how do we even get to it? Yeah. So that's why that's my first one. I'm not saying there's not other things that people talk about, but we spend so much time working locations trying to figure out how to clean that spot over there that was really never made to go to.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So there are conveyors way up high in the ceiling. They're conveyors down low, but they're hard to access because of what's around there.

SPEAKER_01:

So you'll have people standing on them, walking on them to clean up a bunch of piece of equipment trying to get up there, standing on motors, you know, one ladder, one foot on the equipment because that's the only way to reach it for to spray the hose where I need to spray it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So when we're talking elevated work, it's not necessarily I'm wearing a fall protection harness.

SPEAKER_01:

In a nice scissor lift, where it's all open and pretty.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, which that's that's another one. So are you gonna allow people to have hoses draped over the side of lifts that could potentially pull them down? So elevated work's a big one. And I think my answer to that would be an elevated work assessment. Someone's gotta have it.

SPEAKER_01:

Like someone, I'm I'm gonna but we do for a living. Okay. Someone who does sanitation and someone that knows safety and someone who's afraid of heights.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, well, that's you. That's you.

SPEAKER_01:

That's why I look at it the way I do. So when I do elevated work, I don't look out like everybody else. I don't want to do that. So I'm always thinking of a different way.

SPEAKER_00:

So just to take a quick detour here. So we went to Glacier National Park recently over the summer. Right. And I'm gonna tell you right now, I did not know he was so afraid of heights. Oh, yeah. I'm not at all. And I was a passenger. And what's the road called? What's the road that you took to the sun? The road to the sun.

SPEAKER_01:

And there's a reason.

SPEAKER_00:

You gotta do it if you go there. Um, but I did not realize that it was gonna be so nerve-wracking for some people in our group. It wasn't for me, and I'm just having a grand old time drinking my coffee, and he's over here just white knuckling it at 20 around these S-curves.

SPEAKER_01:

And that is why I'm good at those because I look at them like you would not have been happy with me driving.

SPEAKER_00:

I can tell you that right now.

SPEAKER_01:

We wouldn't. The point of it is, everyone, that's why elevator works, my top right off the side of the mountain. I'm not saying lockouts not boring, I'm saying from my world, elevator works is the most extreme. So that so we do that service because I'm looking at how I feel. I look literally about I don't want to climb up that ladder or lean way off to the left. How the row is gonna push me back. Don't worry about all that.

SPEAKER_00:

One foot on the equipment, which maintenance hates, and they're always like, How is this always broken? We all know now. So to the point where I have a shirt on the website about that moment, honestly. So check out Alan Safety.com's merch page. Merch. Here's our plug because we have no sponsors. Um, check that out. There is a sanitation safety one, and if you're in maintenance, it'll probably make you laugh. So you can check it out on Amazon or, like I said, AlanSafety.com's uh merch page.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, so that's my first elevated work.

SPEAKER_00:

Elevated work, yeah. It's gotta be an assessment.

SPEAKER_01:

I do a lot of nights. Well, I'm not gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00:

That's what I was just gonna say. It's gotta be at night. It's gotta be at night.

SPEAKER_01:

Because that's the only way I can figure out a way to make it better. Yeah. I have to see all, even if it's bad, I have to see how bad bad is to give them a good plan to make it less.

SPEAKER_00:

Gotta have a baseline first. Also, the one-offs like intensified sanitation or hand scrubbing or whatever you could.

SPEAKER_01:

You've got different stuff.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, whatever you would do in your food safety plan if you had some kind of swabs pop positive, and you had to do extra cleaning, hand scrubbing, where and how? Because those two questions are what you want to have answers to if that ever happens, and not be figuring out how are we gonna get these people safely to be able to clean at elevation, because I've been there, done that, and it's a bummer.

SPEAKER_01:

So number two is pretty easy, it's like I tag out.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

And and the reason about it is we have another episode to talk about like a little bit and some others, but because I have an evaporator Saturday, I'm gonna do elevated work, says a lift, then I've got to do like a tag out. Yeah, then I've got fans, I may have ammonia, I may have glycol, I may have other stuff. The reason that's important to me is I may start tying multiple risks together that people don't think about. They would never do during the week normal plant. Yeah only sanitation would have that variable like that.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I also want to say in regards to the lockout piece, we're forgetting it's we put on the lock, remove the guard next, put the guard back on, then take the lock off. Normally, that's how we want to approach it. And sometimes at some of our plants, there's this weird transition period where sanitation's done cleaning in this room, but production hasn't come in. We haven't done the the swabs or anything. Food safety hasn't checked everything and inspected. There may not be a guard there. Yeah, we haven't done pre-op, and so we're sitting here waiting for pre-op to happen and people to come in and the guards are not on, and everybody just left it in open until all these people start coming out to the floor. Right. You gotta have a guard on when you have all these people coming out out to the, I mean, to the floor. That's weird.

SPEAKER_01:

But that lockout is is they're not working on it. So people will interpret that, well, it's a different category. Well, it's kind of machine guarding, but you change that variable by taking the lock off. Lock the tag out for this. We were good. Leave the lock on it. We're never doing the work, but so you gotta look at your lockout for sanitation. And for those you don't know, have spent so much zillions of hours over the years on lockout tag out for sanitation. So much, but but you gotta look at all the different control variables.

SPEAKER_00:

I am sorry every time we do these, I have a cough, but I guess that's what you get when you have young kids. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01:

So, but the point of it is you gotta you gotta look at all the variables, look at where you're gonna, and then my other part about lockout is you've got to make those logs accessible. Yeah, because it's it's it's really, really hard to even get to the disc in it. Yeah, and they're wet.

SPEAKER_00:

That's what I was just gonna say. Let's consider what they're wearing.

SPEAKER_01:

Maybe we're throwing a ladder, and now they're reach out. You've added so many wrist variables. Let's help them out and get it somewhere else.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, not to mention uh based on how our air changes are, could be foggy in the road. Yeah, so so now we it's foggy because we've got the cold with the hot water, the ventilation's weird. They've got goggles on, they may have a face shield on it, they've got all this stuff. Like, why are we making them nightly use a ladder to go do something? Let's just drop it down.

SPEAKER_01:

My third one, my third one is training. Yeah, why did I why did I not pick confined space? Why did I not pick post handling? Why did I not pick ladder safety? Because the we worked multiple events, the training was more the control than the actual activity. Training, did we train them correctly how to do the task? Yeah, did we train him correctly of how to handle a problem when the task has a problem? For example, you use an A-frame ladder and put a hose. Where's the hose going to be in position of your body? We we may tell them to use the hose, but if that hose goes around the door and someone else pulls it, it can pull that person off the ladder or pull the ladder.

SPEAKER_00:

Three points of contact, too.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's going up and down with the hose running. So the training function of that, the confined space wrist, that that elevated work wrist, that lockout, though that section itself is where I spend a lot of my time because I think that's one of the biggest gaps.

SPEAKER_00:

Because well, it's even if you go back to the elevated work piece, uh, should we be using a harness or is a positioning belt okay?

SPEAKER_01:

That's correct. And and so as you go through those sectors when you're looking at the different functions of your organization, look at the training piece. I'm not saying your training is good or bad. What I'm saying is your training is not handling the job function, it's handling just the task. Carrying the ladder through the job, I get just as many injuries as I do on the ladder. And you know, pulling the hose the wrong way, you know, taking the guard off. So it's it's a process of how you do that. We have more issues than we do when they get to that. Putting the PP the correct PPE on is a training issue. Once I get it on, fine. Mixing the chemicals a training issue. Mixing the chemical, I get it, it's fine. It's not when it's fine, it's when these one-offs occur, and then how do you manage it also? That's what I want you to know.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. So I think part of it is understanding and recognizing there's not a lot of sanitation specific that was created for sanitation and data out there. It is created for production, right? And then like we can kind of try and make it work for sanitation if we make that change at all.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

And so we're relying on our our location and area managers in a lot of aspects to fill in the gaps.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

But if they're new or we've seen turnover there, or they don't they don't have a lot of tenure in that specific plant industry with that equipment, they may not have seen it, they may not know it's a thing.

SPEAKER_01:

So and sanitation is one of those areas that sometimes you get hired because it because you know, maybe less hours or fits your schedule better, you're going to school, whatever. Yeah. So you so you you don't have some of that background knowledge because it could be your first job at that plant.

SPEAKER_00:

You may not, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And and then you take we did the SDS episode the other day. I mean, if you take an SDS and give it to somebody who's even going to college and you say, All right, now we're the PPE based on this, and they look at the SDS and look at the PPE, they're like, How does this associate? I mean, there's so many weird things like that that have sanitation, you wouldn't think anything.

SPEAKER_00:

It is such a completely different animal for production, not to and including, you know, where how we have guardrails in the plants. We sort of need something for the leading edge piece on sanitation, but we don't during the day because there's production, there's an animal there. Yeah, or equipment moves. Or equipment, yeah. So, you know, you really have to break down and evaluate, I think, not only the content of the training to your point, but also who is delivering that message to make sure that they really know sanitation just because there's so much gray area and so many one-offs and so much dynamic change during the night as you progress through the different steps of dry pickup to wash down to foaming and then back to pre-op in the morning and trying to peep put things together while other people are trying to assemble equipment and they're in the room and let's not shower them with chemical. I mean, there's just so much going on that is different where once production gets going, it's kind of going and we're good.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Like I said, so so that's why training is my thumb because that that if we if you really back up and look at some of the events in history we've been ball with, it was a training function.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and yeah, guess what? Confined space is significant, yeah, but if we train it's not on the right things, it's it's a non-event.

SPEAKER_01:

Elevated work, not if you train right.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it should be a non-event.

SPEAKER_01:

Walk out tagged better if you train right. So and the reason we bring up training for Santa, it is. It's kind of that that other time period, that other thing that we have it and we know we have it, but it just has its own.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's it's also difficult because a lot of the time it's at night, and that's a hard sell for people to want to go and work nights. And so, you know, generally the the progression is when I get to tenure, I don't want to work nights anymore. You know what I mean? And so having the experience, you don't want to do that shift sometimes based on what your at-home life looks like. So it's really, really hard to keep knowledge sometimes on that specific shift. And so that's where you want to really start evaluating who are those critical people or your organization or your company, or if you need to bring in a third party.

SPEAKER_01:

Um and I will tell you, as a third party, um, the years I've had this company, I did more of this before the kids are around.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So as the kids are getting older, I am looking at how many nights am I doing? I mean, yeah, we do, yeah. I didn't mind so much. Now I'm like, okay, now I gotta be on soccer tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right.

SPEAKER_01:

And and then my last uh thing, my bonus is bonus. All right, here we go. Um, is just the concept of sleep and family responsibility.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Because I came in last night at nine o'clock and I managed it all night, but now I gotta stay till 8:30 morning meeting and I get home at 10. Maybe I get home and the kids are off today and they want to do everything, so I don't sleep. See, you whether you like it or not for that job to have sanitate, you have to calculate a sleep function and calculate errors may occur because people aren't really clicking.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the sleep deprivation piece the switch I feel it when I'm switching. The switching back and forth shifts from weekends to especially a three-day weekend.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, it's terrible.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But I because I did that a few weeks ago, I did a three-day weekend that I was supposed to do nights one night, and I was like, I'm tired.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, or they end up staying up with their family and then trying to take a nap later on. I mean, like, it's really anybody who switched shifts knows it's rough when you've got family up during the day and you're trying to get away. You want to be part of the activity.

SPEAKER_01:

There's no football game at night all during the day. Yeah. So you want to be part of it. So what you have to do from a safety side is calculate that they're not always gonna be perfect, and you got to put different buffers in place. It can't be the same lockout or elevator, even as day shift, because on you've got that sleep variable coming in all nights, and you got to know that people are like that, and that's part of your risk out of evaluation.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

So that's mine for today.

SPEAKER_00:

All right, so that's our opinion. So take what is helpful, leave the rest. If it did help you at all, again, this is kind of a community service thing that Joe and I are doing. So we just asked that if it was helpful, please share it. Please help us, you know, get it to the people that need to see it, that need the information, haven't had the experiences yet, but would find it helpful. And um leave a like, leave a comment, engage with the channel. It really does help the algorithm. And again, if you do want to say, hey, thanks, we support you, um, the Allen Dash Safety.com merchandise page or on Amazon is a really appreciated way that you could do that. So that's another method. Um, if you want to go beyond just liking, sharing, commenting, all that good stuff. So all right. Take care. We'll see you next time. 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 www.alensafetycoaching.com for web-based virtual coaching and training, or at www.alan-safety.com 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 to simply 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 can benefit from the information we cover here, and that helps us to continue to put up this free podcast. Thank you so much for your support.

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Joe Allen

Host
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Jen Allen

Co-host