from escalating to safety incidents and health problems.
Explore practical exercises for safety training, site assessments.
Composting involves many potential hazards because all operations involve equipment with rotating and moving parts, such as conveyors, grinders, chippers, power take-off (PTO) drives, bagging lines, motors and engines, windrow turners and mechanical screens.
Awareness of these hazards and preparation keeps potential risks from escalating to safety incidents and health problems. Often, as workers become more experienced, worksite safety walk-arounds and evaluations become less effective.
Workers see the same workplace every day, so they can lose sight of the hazards they regularly face. Similarly, when conducting training, instructors can take the easy route and prepare a lecture rather than create an interactive exercise for a group of trainees to work on together.
To follow are a series of questions that can be used in team exercises for both site evaluation and training. The questions focus on mechanical equipment, exploring it from both the operations and maintenance points of view.
If teams consist of both experienced and inexperienced employees, they can share information and learn from each other. Teams can tackle each piece of equipment to see what they know, where knowledge gaps are, which potential hazards are present, and where deficiencies in protection and prevention exist.
This information can be put to use immediately, and it can be used to guide future equipment purchases.
Operations
Consider these questions for your composting equipment:
■ Is the equipment manufactured with any guards or interlocks, which need to be in place when operating?
■ Are there any work practices or work rules that could address the hazards of the equipment?
■ Can a temporary injury or illness happen from using the equipment?
■ Can a permanent injury or fatality happen from using the equipment?
■ Something goes terribly wrong while operating the equipment. How would you stop the equipment from operating or moving immediately?
■ Can a teenager operate the equipment? What age is appropriate to operate the equipment, and with what kind of training or supervision?
Maintenance
Maintenance raises a few other safety-related questions, such as:
■ What sort of maintenance does the equipment typically need?
■ Does the equipment, or a portion of it, need to be locked out, blocked or chocked? How would this be done?
■ What if the equipment is not locked out, blocked or chocked? Could an injury or fatality result? What could happen?
■ If you were to buy the equipment brand new, which safety features would you especially want to have?
Composters should consider other potential hazards of mechanical equipment, as well. For example, moving parts of equipment that can grab or entangle hair, clothing and people during operations or maintenance are a potential hazard. Unprotected power drivelines, such as on augers or PTO shafts, are another. These can result in amputations, severe lacerations, fractures of limbs, spine and neck injuries or death.
Composters also need to be aware of thrown objects. Some composting equipment, including grinders, chippers, screening plants and windrow turners, can throw objects.
Dust is another consideration composters should make. Some equipment generates dust, which is both an inhalation hazard for workers and a potential fire hazard when it accumulates in welding areas, on engine manifolds, on mufflers and on other equipment components that get hot.
Power lines located over composting operations can also be a hazard if the elevated part of the vehicle is not at least 10 ft. from the power lines to prevent the equipment from becoming energized and shocking the operator.
In addition, foreign objects delivered with composting feedstocks can be damaging to machinery and potentially hazardous to operators. Examples of foreign objects are gas cylinders, containers with chemicals, cables, chains, rope, metal strapping, and large or sharp metal items.
Keep this in mind, as well: Conveyors, grinders, shredders, chippers, mixers, screens and even turners are prone to jams.
Operators have been known to climb inside the tub of a grinder with a sledgehammer and pickax to break up jams. Some equipment may have residual energy that is held back by the jam, and movement can occur when the jam is removed.
Hydraulic equipment also carries the risk of a high-pressure injection injury, a potentially serious injury that typically occurs when workers search for leaks with their fingers and the hydraulic fluid is forced into the skin. It’s important to be sure all pressure is released from the hydraulic system.
Also, never loosen or tighten a hydraulic connection when the system is under pressure – the connection could fail catastrophically and cause an injection injury and damage to property.
Nellie Brown, MS, CIH, is the director of Workplace Health and Safety Programs at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Some of the information in this article was adapted from a chapter in the forthcoming second edition of the “On-Farm Composting Handbook,” edited by Robert Rynk. Brown can be reached at njb7@cornell.edu.