What emergency eyewash and shower equipment is best for your workplace?

By Paul Degnan

In spite of extensive safety measures, every year hundreds of employees experience the trauma of eye injuries and soft tissue damage caused by contact with hazardous substances in the workplace.

Experts agree the most important first aid for accidents involving eye or skin contact with injurious materials is copious irrigation within seconds. The recommended maximum time between accident and irrigation is 10 seconds, so emergency eyewash and/or shower equipment must be sited accordingly. Where strong caustics or acids are present, the emergency eyewash and / or shower should be immediately adjacent.

This is critical because, when a hazardous substance makes contact with the human eye, damage to sensitive tissue can be immediate. In certain cases, the only hope to reduce the severity of injury and reduce the time and treatment required for recovery is by utilising emergency eyewash and shower facilities.

With the wide variety of strong acid, caustic, paints, poisons, petrochemical and hazardous solutions in use throughout industry, it is a most important risk management design consideration to ensure that your emergency eyewash and shower equipment is both compliant with the relevant Standards and installed in accordance with those Standards .

One size or type does not fit all – there are vastly different requirements in vastly different industries, extending from food processing to mining, from manufacturing to materials handling, from laboratories and pharmaceuticals to primary production.

What is your legal obligation?

As an employer, it is your legal obligation to provide the correct personal protective equipment (PPE) that suits the application for the workers to perform their tasks in the workplace. It is also your responsibility to ensure that your employees are adequately trained to use the equipment provided in the correct manner, that the equipment is Standards compliant, functional, adequately signed and accessible.

However, even with correct PPE, accidents do happen so choosing the correct emergency eyewash and shower equipment is critical.

What information can we use to help determine correct equipment?

There are several sources of good information to help avoid or minimise the enormous physical and financial penalties for accidents:

Always seek expert medical guidance when using dangerous or hazardous goods, so as to determine the best first aid equipment to have on hand – just in case. “We didn’t think of that” is not a very good argument in court, or when someone’s sight or life is in the balance.
Refer to industry references to help guide you to the most appropriate products. These may include Industry Standards. ANSI Z 358.1 2004 is the most commonly accepted standard used in Australia when determining the most appropriate emergency eyewash or shower equipment. This standard establishes dimensional, performance, certification and use requirements for the emergency treatment of the eyes or body of a person who has been exposed to injurious materials. Industry Best Codes of Practice are a very good source of information. Industry-specific Standards are also written for Laboratories and Battery Rooms.
Use the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) accompanying products that you are likely to come in contact with. These also contain first aid recommendations. Documents such as MSDS provide crucial information and should be readily available to employees. In the event of an emergency, the MSDSs for that particular hazardous substance should be identified and brought with the injured party when further medical help is sought. This will aid medical personnel in the proper treatment of the injury.
Consult reputable manufacturers of emergency eyewash and shower equipment. Companies such as our own, Enware have built up a wealth of technical knowledge over more than 20 years operating in every State, Territory and in major overseas markets. We manufacture and supply fully independently certified and compliant ANSI Z 358.1 2004 emergency eyewash and shower equipment. We are the only manufacturer in Australia whose products are tested by the CSIRO, then audited and certified by SAI Global to the ANSI Standard. We believe this is an industry first.

How do we choose the correct equipment?

There is a bewildering array of emergency shower and eyewash equipment. Different applications provide plumbed systems, self-contained gravity fed systems, portable systems, sealed eyewash bottles with buffered saline, for example.
Before you choose in this complex field, contact your relevant State and/or national workplace safety organisations– and consult with a reputable supplier of certified product. It could save you a lot of time now and heartache later

What is the difference between Primary and Secondary eye wash equipment?

A primary eye wash device may be a self-contained, portable or plumbed unit that (among other attributes) activates within a second or less, flushes both eyes simultaneously, provides hands-free operation, and delivers not less than 1.5 litres a minute of tepid flushing fluid preferably aerated for a minimum of 15 minutes (The tepidity requirement is to encourage the full 15 minute flushing. The water flow is softened to help minimise damage to the corneal of the eyes.

Secondary or personal eye wash devices do not meet the ANSI Z 358.1 2004 standard requirements for primary emergency response. These types of devices are, therefore, intended for support use, not as a replacement for self-contained or plumbed units. These secondary devices are typically located in the immediate vicinity of employees working in a potentially hazardous area and are used to deliver first aid while getting the person to a 15-minute primary unit, or as an extended aid when transporting a person from the 15-minute primary unit to a medical facility. Secondary units do not provide 15 minutes of continuous hands-free flushing simultaneously to both eyes as required under ANSI Z 358.1 2004.

Where do we put the equipment?

Given the 10-second limit or immediately adjacent requirement (where acids and caustics are present) for access to emergency shower and eye wash equipment, this is obviously an important question. General guidelines include taking into account the path of travel to the emergency shower and eye wash equipment, which must not be obstructed and which must be on the same level as the potential hazard.

And a word about Enware

Enware is a major supplier of industrial safety equipment throughout Australasia and the largest manufacturer of stainless steel showers in the region. We export to 15 countries. The company is accredited to the highest ISO quality grading, ISO 9001-2000, for its quality assurance in design, development, production, installation and servicing of its ranges of water technology and safety systems. We are not just a supplier of safety products; we are an organisation in which total quality standards are observed from design and selection of materials, right through manufacturing to installation and service. Enware’s custom manufacturing capability provides total solutions engineered to particular safety requirements.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, please contact Enware Australia Pty Ltd, 9 Endeavour Road, Caringbah, Sydney 2229, ph (02) 9525 9511, fax (02) 9525 9536

Click here to email your query to us.