Safety Awakening – “What If?”

May 23, 2014 No Comments

“What If?”

When performing a safety inspection, there are two words that I’m continuously thinking about – “What if?”   What if this happens?   Or, what if that fails?   Below are photos of some potential hazards I was able to identify by asking “What if?”

Here’s a restaurant kitchen employee sharpening a knife.  The knife sharpener he’s using is actually worn on the back side of his hand.  I asked myself  “What if the knife slipped out of the sharpener while he was pulling it?”   “What if the blade contacted his cut resistant glove?”  “What if there was a hole in the glove in the area where the knife’s blade was?”  “What if the employee wasn’t wearing a cut resistant glove when the knife slipped out of the sharpener?”  After further research, I was able to find a case where an employee was using this type of knife sharpener without any glove, the knife slipped and the employee severed multiple tendons!

Here’s a pallet with 55-gallon drums full of steel.  Really heavy stuff.  This pallet is right next to a main aisle in this plant.  Notice the crack in the pallet’s stringer in the middle of the page?  “What if this pallet failed and the heavy drum were to fall onto the adjacent aisle?”  “What if an employee were in this aisle when the pallet failed?”

Here’s the backside of a rack in a warehouse.  It is next to a pedestrian aisle.  “What if these boxes were to fall out the back side of this rack?”  “What if an employee were under it when it fell?”   Obviously, this employer had already considered this scenario and installed wire mesh on the backside of this rack to prevent this possibility.

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