ANNISTON ARMY DEPOT, Ala. -- Every year, millions of American workers are injured, get sick or die as a result of workplace hazards.

But, what exactly is a hazard?

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration defines a hazard as something with the potential for harm.

The Army defines a hazard as a condition with the potential to cause injury, illness or death of personnel; damage to or loss of equipment or property; or mission degradation.

Any way you put it, here at Anniston Army Depot, we are surrounded by potential hazards every day.

ANAD workplaces, especially in the Nichols Industrial Complex, are full of hazards, such as mobile equipment operating alongside pedestrians, large machinery with moving parts, toxic or flammable chemicals and more.

How do we control employee exposure to hazards?

It's simple: through a Job Hazard Analysis.

A JHA is a process where hazards are identified before they have the opportunity to cause harm.

Through the JHA process, we examine the relationship between the worker, the job the worker performs, tools used to perform the job and the work environment itself.

If hazards are identified during the JHA process, it is important to find a way to remove or reduce the hazard.

In a perfect world, a JHA would be performed for all jobs, no matter how big or small. However, we all must do more with less.

That means it's best to do JHAs for jobs that:

• Have high rates of injury or illness

• Can cause serious or fatal injuries even if it's never happened before

• Can lead to serious or fatal injuries if only one simple mistake is made

• Are new to the depot

• Have recently changed

• Are complex enough that they required written instructions, but not complex enough for a Standard Operating Procedure or Depot Process Control Pamphlet.

To begin the JHA, break the job down into the different steps or tasks.

To make sure all the steps are correct, it is best to involve employees who perform the process on a regular basis. The employees who perform the job are the subject matter experts and have a better understanding of the hazards of the job.

For example, a press operator's job can be broken down into these steps:

1. Pick up a sheet of metal from source bin

2. Place and align metal in press

3. Press cycle buttons

4. Remove pressed metal and place in product bin

Once the different steps of the job are identified, the next phase of the JHA is to identify the hazards involved in each step.

Looking for the hidden hazards is a little like being a detective.

One must use a mixture of knowledge, experience, common sense and creativity to anticipate the hazards.

When looking for the hazards in each step, ask yourself the following questions:

• What can go wrong?

• If something does go wrong, what are the possible consequences?

Once the job has been broken down into steps and the anticipated hazards have been identified, the next step is to develop controls.

In the safety world, we have a hierarchy of controls. The first, and most preferred, control is elimination/substitution.

If we can get rid of the hazard all together, that's always best.

The second best is engineering controls, such as machine guards, which enclose the hazard to help prevent harm to employees.

If elimination or engineering controls are not feasible, then we move to applying administrative controls to address the hazard.

Some examples of administrative controls are: safe work practices, written safety policies, rules and supervision, signs, alarms and training.

When exposure to hazards cannot be engineered completely out of normal operations or when safe work practices do not provided adequate protection, we must use personal protective equipment. PPE is the last line of defense.

Once the job has been broken down into its steps, the hazards in each step have been identified, and controls have been considered, the information can be captured on a job hazard analysis form.

Here at ANAD, our local safety regulation, ANADR 385-1, addresses our JHA policy in chapter three.

In accordance with the regulation, JHAs must be reviewed annually.

During this review, you should take time to look at your cost center's history of accidents as well as any near misses, events in which an accident or loss did not occur, but could have. These misses are a sign existing controls, if any, may not adequately address the hazard.

JHA forms can be found on the ANAD Safety Intranet page, under forms. Once completed, they should be filed in Tab 1 of the Go-To-Resource.

References:

DA PAM 385-30 -- Safety -- Risk Management

OSHA Publication 3071, 2002 -- Job Hazard Analysis