Firemen policy

By law, all firefighters must have at least a foundational level of training in handling and responding to hazardous situations. Training for competency comes in four categories. Personnel who are likely to observe a haz-mat situation, such as law enforcement, are at the first-responder awareness level. Most fire station employees who handle haz-mat situations on-site frequently work at the first-responder operational level. Technicians who work with hazardous materials react to releases or potential haz-mat situations and plug, patch, or otherwise put an end to these occurrences. While working side by side with hazardous material technicians, hazardous material specialists need to be more skilled and have a deeper knowledge of the environment and tools to respond to haz-mat events. Most fire department response personnel are organized into dedicated teams and allocated dedicated vehicles to handle specific hazard situations depending on their response time, the magnitude of the event and their level of competency. Small volunteer services may offer hotline services as alternatives to the fire department and first-response first aid services. Depending on their funding, they may have a dedicated team and vehicle, but this is often not the case.

Lesson 10 Forum

The Ontario legislation defines a confined space as a partially or entirely enclosed space that is not designed for continuous human occupancy, which poses atmospheric hazards within, owing to space’s construction, location, contents or because of the work conducted therein. NIOSH and OSHA however, define a confined space as space which by design has limited openings for natural entry and exit by human workers and unfavorable natural ventilation which could contain or produce hazardous air contaminants thus are not suitable for continuous worker occupancy. They differ on certain criteria, such as the Ontario legislation acknowledging that confined spaces may be fully closed whereas the NIOSH and OSHA definition only states that the confined space has limited number of entry or exit points. The Ontario definition does not highlight the natural entry or exit of human workers into these spaces but specifies the circumstances are precluding the necessity of these workers in such spaces.

Not every confined space that fits the NIOSH definition fits the Ontario definition of a confined space because the NIOSH definition does not cater for details such as the design of these spaces, their location, their tendency to restrict movement and the materials contained therein which can pose a health risk to the worker.

Employers can implement a reasonable confined space program by training their workers on how to respond to casualties during work and offering protective equipment and first-aid training to mitigate the chances of work incidents and fatalities resulting from these incidences, these measures being reasonably affordable in contrast with accidents.

Lesson 8 Forum

Use of engineering controls at the source, such as incorporating noise dampeners into the wall or surrounding the source of the noise can protect workers from temporary or long-term hearing loss. These dampeners would, of course, require routine maintenance.

Use of administrative controls along the path may include the rotation of workers at regulated intervals. Therefore, the exposure of these workers to noise, although not entirely eliminated, is greatly reduced.

At the worker, control may involve noise-cancellation headphones or mufflers. These devices require minimum training to use, routine maintenance and do not pose discomfort to the worker. In order to facilitate communication despite the noise, modern noise-cancellation headphones are fitted with an intercom link that only produces sound inside the headphones. Therefore, all other sound except that which comes through the headphones is muffled.