Walking Through Your Plant With Your Eyes Really Open
Jeffrey J. Joaquim, CH, CSP, MS
 Laundry management team members walk miles per day in their laundry facilities. Their eyes are constantly moving, seeking snapshots. What kind of information are they looking for you ask? The majority of managers are looking at quality and productivity, or for a specific customer’s product. These team members repeat this snapshot process day after day. Why? Because they know that the pictures they see affect the bottom line. Unfortunately, the well meaning and dedicated managers are receiving an incomplete picture. They have forgotten to include “safety” in their viewfinder. Safety goes hand-in-hand with quality and productivity. Leave out one element of this triad and the others will suffer. That’s right, you will experience better quality and productivity if safety is interwoven into your organization’s culture.

To help you develop a safety culture and better focus your safety viewfinder, I am going to give you some checklist items that are found in all laundries.

Aisles
Do they exist? All facilities must have clearly recognizable aisles to direct employees from their departments to exits, restrooms, lunchrooms, the time clock, and the office. The easiest way to make aisles recognizable is to mark their edges with traffic paint or tape.

How wide should they be? If you routinely have carts or forklifts traveling in an aisle, it must be wide enough to accommodate the material handling equipment. Let your traffic flow dictate the width of your aisles. Aisles shall not be narrower then 28 inches in low foot traffic areas.

Are they clear? Aisles must be kept clear at all times. This means the you can not use aisles to store hampers containing in-process product.

Can you have rails crossing over aisles? Yes, but only the following are true: The rails are at least 7 feet above the aisle floor surface; no product is stored below the 7 foot mark; rails less than 7 feet from the floor are temporarily bridged over the aisles when you need to move the product from one side to the other.

Exit Signs
Readily visible exit signs are required to be posted over exit doors. Arrowed exit signs shall be posted at each change-of-direction in the aisle.Do the signs have to be electrified? That depends on your local codes. The federal OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) standard requires that the signs be illuminated by a reliable source giving a value of not less than 5 foot-candles of illumination on the sign surface.

Are light bulbs burnt out in any of you signs? Typical signs have four light bulbs. That is right, four. Two light bulbs remain illuminated 24-hours, 7-days per week. The other two bulbs will only illuminate if you loose power or when you press the “Test” button. (The exit signs should be tested on the monthly basis, along with the Emergency Lights, etc.) A burnt out light bulb must be changed immediately.

Emergency Eyewash and Shower
Where would an eyewash or combination eyewash and shower be needed? An eyewash would be needed where hazardous chemicals are present in very small quantities. Large quantities, (quantities sufficient to contaminate your body), would require the presence of an eyewash and shower. A typical laundry has three areas that contain chemical hazards, the wash alley, the boiler room and the wastewater room. If these three areas are distinctly separate, three units would be required. If two areas are in very close proximity, (15 to 20 feet apart, without obstacles) you can get away with sharing one unit.