Sem 2 2005 Q1) (a)why OHS legislation is necessary?

-to reduce high incidence/severity risks -to secure health, safety and welfare of workers -to provide for the involvement of employers and employees in formulating and implementing safety standards -to improve the capacity of management and workers to manage OHS effectively -to prevent occupational disease more effectively -to eliminate hazards at the design stage -to strengthen the capacity of government to influence OHS outcomes (b)list and discuss the obligations of employers and employees in hazardous substances legislation. Employers must: -ensure that all workplace procedures, equipment, containers and plant are optimised to prevent accidents -make all employees aware of any potential hazards in the workplace -take all steps possible to prevent workplace accidents, injuries or illnesses Employees must: -take reasonable care for self and others -cooperate with employers -not willfully interfere with or misuse anything provided for OHS -not willfully place at risk anyone else (c)meaning of 'duty of care' in a workplace. 2 examples of how it is implemented in a workplace. General 'duty of care' is to provide and maintain, as far as practivable, a working environment which is safe and without risk to health. It requires all persons involved in a workplace have to do everything reasonably practicable to protect the health and safety of others. Examples: -in a library, the management should provide any appropriate lifting tool to help the librarian to lift any boxes from one place to another place in order to prevent manual handling injuries to the librarian. -in a lab, the management should provide the health monitor for the workers in the lab in order to prevent any unwanted incidence (infection, diseases) from happening.

Q2) (a)Factors that must be considered when deciding if exposure will result in poisoning. -the period of exposure: the longer you are in contact, the greater the amount you will inhale of absorb -the frequency of exposure: the more often you are exposed to a poisonous environment, the greater the amount of poison you absorb -the route of exposure: generally, if a substance is absorbed through inhalation, you will absorb more in a given time than if it was absorbed through skin -the persistence of the substance: it refers to how long a substance remains in a particular site -the concentration of poison: the higher the concentration, the higher the risk (b)meaning of: (i)TWA Time Weighted Average (TWA) or Treshold Limit Value (TLV) is the average concentration of a poisonous substance allowed in the air of the working environment over an eight-hour day and a five-day working week which will not cause any undesirable health effects in the majority of people. It is developed to protect workers from significant exposure to toxic substances over their working lives. The larger the TWA/TLV, the less poisonous a substance is by exposure (ii)STEL Short Term Exposure Limit which is the 15-minutes TWA exposure limit which should not be exceeded at any time, even if the eight-hour average is within the exposure standard. It should not be for more than 15 minutes and should not happen for more than four times in a day. There must be at least one hour between each exposure to the STEL limit. (iii)LD50 It is the dose of a poison required to kill 50% of a population. It is used as a quantitative estimate of how poisonous a substance will be if taken or injected. The lower the LD50, the more poisonous the substance. Some individuals may respond differently in which hypersensitive (more sensitive than normal) and hyposensitive (less sensitive than normal). *TWA and STEL are generally considered more important than LD50 for estimating the level of risk from hazardous substances because the route of exposure for both TWA and STEL are common, which is usually by inhalation or absorption, as compared to the route of exposure for LD50, which is usually by injection. Moreover, most poisonings occur via inhalation or absorption in which other measures of toxicity rather than LD50 are required in order to identify the amount of contacy a person may have with a substance before he has a toxic effect. Therefore, both TWA and STEL are more important as these exposure standards are developed to measure the exposure in a workplace in order to indicate the safe upper limits of exposure allowed to a particular poisonous substance over a period of time.

Q3) The strategies that might be used to reduce manual handling injuries in a workplace. Employers must: -ensure that all workplace procedures, equipment, containers and plant are optimised to prevent manual handling injuries -provide training as required to prevent workplace manual handling injuries Employees must: -use team lifting procedures, mechanical lifting aids, protective equipment and procedures devised in training whenever it is appropriate Consultative approach: -to ensure management has good knowledge of workplace procedures and the manual handling risks associated with them and to be able to involve the employees in devising strategies to overcome them Q4) (not so sure) Critical account of the various hazard controls in a workplace. Control the risk by: -eliminate -substitute -redesign work practices -enclose -training -housekeeping -personal protection -rescheduling work practices Q5) (not so sure) a)Why benzene and diethyl ether are considered as physical and health hazards? Both are considered as physical and health hazards because they are flammable and poisonous. They can form explosive peroxides which may explode when subjected to heat. It is an uncontrolled reaction. Also, they can affect body through inhalation, swallowed or comes in contact with eyes or skin. b)potential hazards? Procedures of rendering innocuous a small amount of the chemical wastes: (i)organic peroxides -physico-chemical hazard (flammable) (ii)mercury -health hazard (iii)hydrofluoric acid -health hazard(irritation)

Q6) How would you store these chemicals? By using a segregated chemical system. -need to classify the chemicals into solid or liquid chemicals, organic or inorganic compounds, corrosive or non-corrosive and acids or alkalis chemicals-to be stored in different place -for a flammable substances, they should be stored in flameproof cabinets and they must not be

located near to the evacuation paths. -for a storage of corrosive substances, they should be stored in containers on inert trays in the acidresistant cabinets. Also, they should be kept as low as possible. -for the other chemicals, they can be stored in either open or closed shelf according to their chemical compatibility. This can be done according to the alphabetical order but must be done after the separation of the chemicals into categories which will not react to each other. This is because some chemicals that have the same initial alphabet may react to one another if it is mistakenly be placed next to each other. For example, acetic acid and acetyldehyde, which may react due to highly exothermic reaction. Q7) (not so sure for part a) a)outline procedures that must be taken in transportation of chemical wastes to a waste-site for treatment or storage. Why it is important to strictly follow? -avoid the mixing of waste solvents, as far as possible, and for the case of acids and alkalis, they must not be placed next to each other -when solvent mixtures are collected, the name of each solvent should be specified (labelling) -waste chloroform should never be mixed with ether (highly flammable) and acetone solvents as it may react dangerously with impure acetone (containing NaOH) -waste mercury should be collected and placed in bottle and sealed before sending to disposal or storage *It is important to strictly follow in order to ensure the safety and to eliminate the any possible risks at the workplace. b) pros and cons of waste disposal by incineration *Pros -waste colume reduction -destruction of combustible toxins -destruction of pathogenically contaminated material -energy recovery *Cons -precipitation by mixing of wastes -high chlorine content of wastes not allowed (should be maintained below 10%) -maintaining the calorific value of feedstock to ensure complete combustion -air pollution -consider as expensive primarily because extensive air pollution control equipment is required -ash must be landfilled and may be hazardous Q8) Comment on the statement with respect to the lab environment. Q9) (not sure about this but I think it is the same answer as question 5 for 2007 paper with answer given in moodle) What are the principles of biosafety you would follow to reduce occupational hazards? Q10) How does radiation harm living tissue? Describe how you would perform a risk assessment in radiological lab. Different types of radiation will have different effects on the living tissue; hence, it need to be handled in different way to eliminate the risks. These radiation will harm the living tissues by penetrating into the living tissue. Risk assessment: I) identify and classify the types of radiation (hazard potential) -refers to the radiotoxicity group versus the activity of the material (Group 1,2,3 and 4 with Group 1

is the highest hazard). -different types of radiation source present different level of hazard due to different penetrating power and particle. (ie. Alpha-particle has the highest danger from internal exposure then followed by beta-particle, x-ray and Gamma ray) II) assess risk for each types of radiation -determine the likelihood of contamination based on the procedure being done. Assess whether it is highly unlikely, wet unlikely, occasionally, likely or highly likely. -determine the risk of internal or skin contamination for both ionising and non-ionising radiation. III) determine the levels of controls needed -three main strategies to minimise/control the radiation exposure: time minimisation, distance minimisation and shielding. -time: the lesser the time spent near the radiation, the lower the dose of the radiation. -distance: the further the source of radiation, the lower the dose of the radiation. -shielding: depends on the type of radiation (ie. Alpha particle used thin sheet of paper, beta particle used perspex or aluminium and both Gamma ray and X-rays used dense layers of lead or iron). Q11) What is a biological safety cabinet? What is the principal behind the use of biological safety cabinets? Biological safety cabinet is equivalent to the fume cupboards for chemicals. It must be used for work procedures that may result the production of infectious aerosols. There are two classes of cabinets which work with different principal: Class I cabinets: It is the inward flow of air away from the operator in which the air will be exhausted through a filter before being discharged. Class II cabinets: It provides a barrier air flow to protect the operator. There is a laminar flow of filtered air to protect the work area against contamination. Q12) (i)ionizing radiation -Atoms with unstable nuclei give off charges particles and electromagnetic radiation to become more stable. (ii)radioactivity -Atoms are composed of a positively charged nucleus surrounded by negatively charged electrons. Some isotopes of atoms have nuclei which are unstable and tend to decompose. They give off electromagnetic radiation and charged particles. These atoms are said to be radioactive and the process is called radioactive decay or radioactivity. Some examples of radioactive isotopes are phosphorus-32 (used in biological tracing experiments) and carbon-13 (used in radio carbon dating). (iii)half life -The measure of stability of a radioactive atom. It is the time required for half of the radioactive atoms in a sample to decay. It cannot be directly used as an indicator of how hazardous a substance is as the hazardous of the substances are depend on the type and amount of radiation that is being emitted. (iv)radiation measurement -The level of radiation can be measured by physical unit as well as biological unit. The physical units are the measured of the the number of atomic nuclei that decay in a given time (how active the radiation source is). The units are Bacquerel (Bq), in which one Bq = one disintegration per second, and Curie (Ci) or milliCuries (mCi), in which one Ci = 3.7 x 10^10 Bq. On the other hand, the biological units are used to convey the amount of damage that radiation can cause. It is noted that not all types will cause the same amount of biological damage. The units are Roentgens for X-ray

and gamma sources (measured for the exposure), Rems and Sieverts are the units used to measure the dose equivalent which relate the health effects of other types to X-ray and gamma rays sources and Rads and Grays are the units used to measure the dose absorbed which relates the amount of energy transferred per kg of tissue.