Textiles are an integral part of our lives, from the clothes we wear to the fabrics that cover our sofas, floors, windows, beds, and more.
And the textile industry in America, like nearly all others, is subject to important workplace health and safety regulations specific to textile manufacturing.
Textile companies need to ensure that employee exposure to certain chemicals doesn’t exceed safe levels. For example, several of the chemical dyes commonly used in coloring fabrics can cause cancer. There are ways to mitigate the danger though, and that’s where workplace observations and incident reporting come in.
Solutions may be as easy as donning personal protective equipment (PPE) and clothing and eyewear or as complex as measuring exposure to certain chemicals by taking air samples at regular intervals. Encouraging employees to report incidents through an easily accessible EHS software application can deliver appropriate responses more quickly. And through investigation and analysis of incidents, revisions can be made to company protocols that reduce the chances of similar incidents happening again, thereby improving everyone’s safety.
Health and safety procedures can go beyond best practices like ventilation and chemical exposure standards. They may also dictate ongoing monitoring and assessment rules, such as is required when cotton dust is present in a workplace. Industrial hygiene software can help set up and maintain a schedule of exposure assessment and monitoring, as well as recording and reporting results as needed. Risk assessments built into EHS systems can flag processes or procedures that need revision to ensure safety.
Tips for minimizing and mitigating exposure, harm, and liability in the textile industry include familiarizing your team with local, state, and federal regulations, as well as industry standards. In addition, coming up with an EHS training protocol ensures that rules and regulations are learned, understood, and adhered to.
Make sure that procedures are in place for workplace accidents and safety violations, both those that cause active and immediate harm and those that are merely infractions of the rules. When training is developed and delivered, it should be documented in your EHS application. When ongoing training is carried out, document these, too.
Include drills and practices in your EHS processes and procedures. Establish a chain of command and ensure that everyone along the chain of command understands their role and responsibilities in addressing workplace health and safety incidents.
Include in your training any reporting requirements to regulators; know to whom you should report what, when, and how. For better workflow processes, use EHS software to document this information. You can also use it to document employee training, and push new programs to those working the front lines. This will help fulfill regulatory and internal requirements and streamline your own reporting and audits.
If you’re not already using EHS software as a powerful and versatile tool, let us show you how it contributes to textile industry safety. From the most basic reporting functions to the most complex documentation of training and drills, we can provide safety professionals with the information they need to ensure compliance with government and industry regulations.