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Region V’s Toledo, Ohio Area Office Holds All-Ohio Foundry Days
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To reach out to the foundry industry, the OSHA Region V Toledo, Ohio Area Office
held an All-Ohio Foundry Day at the AK Steel Corporation Plant (a current
OSHA Strategic Partnership Program participant) in Mansfield, Ohio on
October 22, 2008. The purpose of the event was to share the findings from OSHA
inspections with foundries so that their health and safety professionals would
be better able to address specific industry hazards. A list of invitees was
culled from compliance records, industry registers, and manufacturing guides; in
addition, foundry representatives from Kansas, Missouri, West Virginia, North
Carolina, and Ohio were invited and attended. A single mailing resulted in more
acceptances than anticipated, so the Office held an additional Foundry Day, this
time on November 6, 2008 for 89 staff members of the Ohio OSHA On-site
Consultation Program. The Toledo Area Office often invites staff from the
On-site Consultation Program to its outreach events to encourage consistency
between enforcement and compliance assistance.
Topics covered at the Foundry Day included safety and health program management,
arc flash and arc blast hazards, and injury reduction for material handling
operations. Todd Jensen, Industrial Hygienist in the Toledo Area Office,
presented OSHA findings from foundry inspections and focused on the hazards,
personal protection equipment (PPE), and engineering controls of various foundry
departments. The AK Steel Plant Manger and the Safety & Health Manager discussed
the development of their PPE program. The open forum of Foundry Day encouraged
discussion among the participants. For example, one attendee requested
information about the correct PPE for a specific task. The presenter, the
audience, and a PPE product representative all discussed the issue. Multiple
suggestions for addressing it included combining various forms of PPE and
researching individually made specialty items currently in use at some
foundries.
Two invited speakers discussed specific areas of concern in depth. Robert
Sterling, a certified industrial hygienist, explained safety and health
management systems. His extensive experience in implementing these systems in
the foundry industry and in designing them at various corporate headquarters
enabled him to address the wide-ranging questions asked by the participants. Bob
Nicholson, Electrical Designer/Arc Flash Specialist, discussed electrical arc
flash and arc blast hazards, as well as the OSHA standards and National Fire
Protection Association (NFPA) 70E standard. He addressed the concepts and
hazards and then described each of the applicable standards and focused on how
the 70E standard relates to the OSHA standards.
Toledo Area Office Assistant Area Director, Scott Feil, discussed ergonomics
hazards in the foundry industry and described two projects. In the first
project, managers at Wisconsin foundries worked with federal OSHA
representatives to select and train volunteers (foundry employees) to identify
ergonomic hazards. The participating foundries videotaped the volunteers as they
and the Agency staff analyzed the possible solutions for the hazards. The second
project, a Department of Energy funded project that took place in 2000-2002,
involved the work of Iowa State University graduate students in Industrial and
Manufacturing Systems Engineering who trained foundry employees to identify
ergonomic hazards. The foundry employees evaluated 113 jobs and estimated that
32 percent of the ergonomic hazards would be easy to resolve, 10 percent would
be challenging to resolve, and 24 percent would be very challenging to resolve.
In addition, their data revealed that 21 percent of the ergonomic hazards could
be easily minimized but challenging to resolve, 9 percent of the jobs did not
pose a significant ergonomic hazard, and 2 percent of the jobs were not
justified and should be eliminated. During his presentation of the highlights of
the projects, Mr. Feil noted the practical applications for standardized foundry
tasks or routine operations. In addition, he presented "before and after” cost
comparisons from the Wisconsin project, which showed that, in many cases,
foundry ergonomic interventions were cost effective. An example was the
installation of an $800 hydraulic-lifting device that eliminated the manual
lifting of a 75-lb piece of equipment. In relation to previous injury
rates/occurrences, this expense "paid itself off” (i.e., began to have cost
benefits) after two weeks.
Attendees made the following comments on the feedback sheets: "I wish they would
have had this kind of a program before OSHA visited my foundry." "Furnace PPE/Pouring
PPE considerations were easy to understand." "NFPA training was great!" "Input
from everyone here." In response to these and other comments, the Toledo Area
Office is planning to hold another "Foundry Day" during September 2009.
For more information, contact
Scott Feil.
As of June 2009.
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