According to the National Institutes of Health, approximately 33 deaths per 100,000 people are associated with cold and heat. Weather conditions can impact your health and safety requirements, presenting new hazards in your manufacturing facility.
What considerations should you make regarding winter safety hazards in manufacturing?
Risk assessment in manufacturing during winter
To perform a risk assessment in manufacturing during winter, you’ll need an awareness of the primary safety risks, such as:
- Slick floors – workers can bring water into your facility after walking in the snow outside, causing slick floors and increasing the risk of slips, trips, and falls.
- Driving during delivery and pickups – driving becomes more hazardous during winter, so deliveries and pickups should be considered in your winter health and safety planning.
- Cold stress – if temperatures are not managed effectively in your manufacturing facility, your workers could suffer cold stress leading to conditions like hypothermia and causing numbness that inhibits productivity.
- Illness due to an increase of humidity, particulate and airborne diseases that thrive in these conditions.
How to manage safety hazards in manufacturing during winter
Let’s discuss some of the best methods for safety hazards in manufacturing during winter.
Perform job hazard analysis
Performing a job hazard analysis is essential to spot any hazards unique to your facility. You should inspect the premises and identify potential hazards to implement safety measures. Once you have a list of job hazards, you can begin planning your health and safety strategy for winter.
Adapt personal protective equipment
In the winter, PPE should include clothing to keep employees warm when working in cold conditions. For instance, you might equip your employees with thick coats, gloves, and hats. This will allow them to keep their extremities warm when loading trucks in the cold.
Review your emergency action plan
In winter, slippy walkways and icy paths might hinder your emergency action plan. To reduce the risk of slips and falls during an emergency evacuation, you can take two routes:
- Gritting all emergency evacuation routes to prevent ice.
- Restructuring your emergency evacuation routes to avoid icy areas.
Highlight hazards using visuals
Signage and visuals can be beneficial, allowing workers to avoid icy paths and other common workplace hazards in manufacturing. You can also use signage to notify workers of PPE requirements for certain areas, ensuring they have the correct thermal gear to work outside.
Install ventilation solutions
Many manufacturing companies consider ventilation a solution for temperature management in hot climates. However, ventilation is essential to ensure even temperatures in your facility. When it is cold, all heat in your facility will rise to the ceiling, creating a cold air pocket on the ground. If this happens, you will not be receiving the benefit of your heating, meaning you won’t achieve ROI on your energy spending. To ensure your workers benefit from your heating, you should consider investing in a ventilation solution. The ventilation solution will provide air circulation to evenly distribute heating throughout the facility.
Use a heat fan
A heat fan provides the benefit of ventilation and heating, allowing air circulation and heating. Adopting heat fans offers numerous advantages for your manufacturing facility, such as:
- Providing workers with warmth and preventing cold stress for more occupational safety.
- Ensuring your equipment does not freeze.
- Reducing condensation to prevent water damage to your equipment.
For the above reasons, a heat fan provides excellent ROI for manufacturing facilities during winter. You can discuss your winter ventilation and heating requirements with a ventilation expert to find your facility’s ideal capacity, size, and number of fans.
Choose Fanquip for winter heating and ventilation solutions
A job hazard analysis is particularly essential during winter when pathways become slippy, and workers are at risk of cold stress. You should perform a risk assessment and take the necessary steps to increase occupational safety while exploring ventilation solutions to prevent cold stress and ensure even temperature distribution in your facility.
At Fanquip, we understand that ventilation solutions are a year-round essential. Contact our team to learn more about your manufacturing facility’s ventilation requirements.
