What Is a Hazard?

The hierarchy of controls is intended to control hazards, so let’s start with this issue.

In general terms, a hazard is something that has the potential to cause harm. To be less abstract, a hazard is something that can cause an injury or illness (or cause damage to a machine or equipment – but we’ll focus on the things that can cause injuries and illness right now).

There are several different kinds of hazards. We’ve listed some categories of hazards below.

Type of Hazard	Description	Example
Safety Hazards	Common hazards that cause immediate injuries and illnesses, and may lead to death	Slip, trip, and fall hazards; working from heights; electrical hazards; moving machines; mobile equipment
Biological Hazards	Other life forms that can cause injury or illnesses	Viruses, bacteria, mold, fungi, animal bites/stings, toxic plants, blood and other bodily fluids
Chemical and other Exposure Hazards	Things that can cause harm to you when you are exposed	Radiation, temperature (high or low), noise, chemicals
Ergonomic Hazards	Strains and stresses on the body caused by workplace motions and body positions	Poorly designed work areas, repeated motions, lifting heavy weights
Psychological or Societal Hazards	Hazards caused by interacting with people and social conditions at the workplace	Workplace violence, sexual harassment, stress, depression, alcohol and drug addiction

Notice that we said a hazard is something that has the potential to cause harm. While it’s important to remember that potential for harm, it’s also worth pointing out these three facts:

· A hazard is not the same thing as the injury or illness itself

· A hazard may never cause an injury or illness (even though it has the potential to)

· Identifying hazards before they cause harm gives you a chance to remove or reduce the potential for harm

How to Identify Hazards

It’s important to try to identify hazards before they cause harm. If you do this, you can then eliminate or otherwise control the hazard so that the hazard never does cause harm.

There are many ways to identify hazards at the workplace. Here are a few:

· Perform routine hazard inspections

· Maintain health and environmental monitoring programs

· Talk to workers about hazards in their work area

· Check your records of near misses, injuries, and illnesses

· Request a free onsite safety consultation from an OSHA inspector

· Perform job hazard analyses

Assessing and Ranking Hazards

In a perfect world, you’d eliminate or control every hazard identified at your work place.

But as you know, the world’s not perfect. So it makes sense to assess the hazards you’ve identified and then rank them in the order in which you should address them.

These are the kind of hazards you should address first:

· Hazards that are very likely to cause harm

· Hazards that would lead to very severe consequences

· Hazards that are both very likely to cause harm and would lead to severe consequences (these would be the highest priority of all)

These kind of issues are typically addressed under the topics of risk management and risk assessment.

Controlling Hazards

Now that we’ve explained what a hazard is, learned some general categories of hazards, listed some ways to identify hazards at the workplace, and touched on the assessment and ranking of hazards, let’s turn our attention to different ways to control safety hazards.

What does it mean to control a hazard?

“Controlling a hazard” is the way that safety people talk about taking a hazard and either:

· Removing its ability to cause harm

· Reducing its ability to cause harm

So, in everyday language, controlling a hazard is a way to make the workplace safer by making a hazardous situation less dangerous.

Are there different types of hazard controls?

Just as their are different categories of hazards, there are also different categories of hazard controls. Those hazard controls are listed in the table below.

Hazard Control	Description	Example
Elimination	Remove a hazard from the workplace	Changing a production process so that a chemical known to cause cancer is no longer used
Substitution	Replace a hazard with something less hazardous	Changing a formula so that instead of working with a highly explosive fluid, workers work with a fluid that’s less explosive
Engineering Control(s)	Design a solution that controls the hazard at its source (requires a physical change at the workplace)	Encasing a noisy machine inside a sound-proof barrier
Safe Work Practice(s)	Develop specific rules and procedures for all workers to follow when working in the presence of or potentially exposed to a hazard	Placing warning labels on hazardous chemicals
Administrative Control(s)	Developing other work practices to protect workers from hazards	Limiting the amount of time workers can work in a noisy area
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)	Protective clothing or equipment that protects a worker from a hazard	Providing hearing protection to people who work in a noisy area

Now that you’ve seen the table with the various hazard controls, let’s discuss a few finer points.

Elimination and Substitution of Hazards:

You’ll sometimes see these two lumped together within the Engineering Controls.

Safe Work Practices:

Some examples of safe work practices include:

· Lockout tagout (energy control programs)

· Confined space entry programs

· Hazard communication

Safe Work Practices and Administrative Controls:

You’ll sometimes see these grouped in as forms of Administrative Controls. However, OSHA specifically says “OSHA uses the term administrative controls to mean other measures aimed at reducing employee exposure to hazards” (other than safe work practices, that is).

Which hazard controls should you use? Which should you try first?

You shouldn’t just try any random hazard control, and you shouldn’t try them in just an order. Instead, there’s a logical progression to work through.