Many workplaces and processes use devices or materials that contain mercury, especially in the healthcare industry. For example, there's mercury in thermometers, manometers, paint, fluorescent light bulbs and batteries. Mercury exposure poses a health risk to employees and others at the workplace.

This series will show you how to do two things to protect your employees against mercury exposure. The first part will explain how to conduct workplace surveys to identify the parts of your operation that use mercury-containing devices and determine if you can replace them with safer mercury-free devices. There's also a ready-to-adapt model survey

Mercury Hazards and Standards

At the workplace mercury usually gets into the body in one of two ways: It makes direct contact with the skin or its vapors get inhaled. Exposure to mercury leads to nausea, chills, gingivitis, fatigue, diarrhea and damage to the gastrointenstinal and nervous systems.

OSHA regulations covering employee exposure to mercury are in the Air Contaminants Standard. The standard lists specific occupational exposure limits (OELs), that is, maximum concentrations of mercury vapors an employee may be exposed to. The OSHA Respiratory Protection and Personal Protective Equipment Standards require the use of appropriate PPE during operations involving exposure or potential exposure to mercury and during cleanups of mercury spills.

Canadian regulation of mercury is similar to the U.S. scheme. Mercury is considered a "controlled substance" under the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System laws. Each of the provinces, territories and the federal domain establish OELs for mercury and mandate that employees exposed to it use appropriate PPE.

Creating a Survey

The first stage in controlling mercury exposure is identifying all the places at your workplace where mercury is present. An effective way to do that is to create a survey, like the one in the Tools section. Give a copy of the survey to the supervisor, department head or other person in charge of work operations at each area in your site or facility and have them fill it out by a specific date. Completed surveys should be turned in to the safety director or coordinator who should consolidate the findings into a single report.

The survey should list:

• A statement of company policy to minimize the risk of mercury exposure;
• Instructions explaining how to complete the survey form;
• Check boxes next to examples of mercury-containing devices that you want department heads to look out for;
• An "Other" box in case department heads notice the presence of a mercury-containing device that you overlooked;
• A place in which department heads can recommend feasible, cost-effective and available replacement devices that don't contain mercury;
• Lines for a device name, manufacturer and contact information; and
• A line for department heads to list their name, department and the date they completed the survey.

Next week, in Part 2 of this series, we'll show you how to create a memo to educate supervisors and department heads on the dangers of mercury and how to handle mercury spills.

Historic Moments in Workplace Safety

The Triangle Shirt Factory Fire

One of the most horrendous workplace tragedies in history took place in New York City at the Triangle Waist Company shirt factory.

Triangle was the quintessential sweatshop. The workers, mostly young women immigrants who could barely speak English, earned pennies a day. Hundreds of them were crowded together in appalling conditions.

The tragedy happened at the end of the day on March 25, 1911, when a fire broke out on the eighth floor. The building was crammed with flammable cloth and the fire quickly spread to the ninth and tenth floors. The building had no fire protection and the only exit doors on each floor were locked from the outside. The workers were trapped. 114 of them were killed.

The building owners were tried but under the laws of the day, they couldn't be convicted. The so-called Triangle Shirt Fire and its aftermath provoked outrage. It gave a huge boost to the labor movement and led to major reforms, including the enactment of fire and building codes and the first workplace safety laws.

The Triangle Shirt Factory after the notorious fire.

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