Risk Assessment
for the Henna Artist
Catharine Hinton for The Henna Page
12th August 2004
| Introduction The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (MHSW Regs) came into force on 31st December 1999. These regulations mean that any employer or self-employed persons must assess the risk to workers and others who may be affected by their work such as customers or passers by. Most of us already carry out risk assessments daily – we notice things, note changes, recognise faults and take the necessary action. All that you need to do is make sure that the assessment is systematic and the findings recorded. If you think that risk
assessment is an over the top
exercise for a henna artist just look at this list of risks which I
identified at a recent event:
At a henna gig: what is the risk, and who
is at risk?
As you can see the people most at risk are us as henna artists! The risk assessment is the opportunity for us to methodically analyse the risk and then develop strategies to eliminate or reduce the risk. We can only benefit from making our work safer and healthier for ourselves, our employees and our customers. Legal Requirements You have to make a ‘suitable and sufficient’ assessment of: ‘the risk to the health and safety of their employees to which they are exposed whilst at work’ and ‘the risks to the health and safety of persons not in their employment arising out of or in connection with the conduct by them of their undertakings’. The Health and Safety at work Act also requires that: Employer to employee – so far as
is reasonably practicable to ensure the absence of risks to health in
connection with the use, handling, storage and transport of articles
and substances (S2 (b) (e))
What is a risk assessment?Employer to persons not in their employment – To ensure that persons are not exposed to risks of health and safety (S3) Employees – Have a duty to take care of other persons affected by their work (S7) Basically risk assessment is defined as an identification of the hazards present and an estimate of the extent of the risks involved. Hazard: Something which has the potential for causing harm Risk: The likelihood of the hazard occurring and causing harm After identifying the hazards and
the risks the next step is to devise and control measures to control
the risks.
‘Suitable and sufficient’ a) This should identify
significant risks – risks likely to arise because of the work activity.
Routine activities associated with life in general don’t need to be
detailed unless they are compounded by the work activity.
b) Should allow identification and priority of measures that need to be taken to comply with relevant statutory measures. c) Should be appropriate to the nature of the work. Risk Assessment Checklist 1.
Identification of hazards associated with the operation and evaluation
of risks arising of the hazards
2. Record the significant findings 3. Identify any group of employees (or maybe single employees) who are especially at risk 4. Identify any group of persons who ma be at risk e.g. visitors, contractors, members of the public 5. Evaluate existing controls, are they satisfactory and if not what action is to be taken e.g. training and provision of information 6. Assess and record the probability or likelihood of an accident occurring as a result of the uncontrolled hazard 7. Record any circumstances arising from the assessment where serious and/or imminent danger arises 8. Identify what information is needed for employees n the risks to their health and safety identified by the assessment, the precautions to be taken and any emergency arrangements 9. Provide an action plan giving information on implementation of additional controls, in order of priority – with realistic timescale Hazard Identification Possible
hazards:
Risk Assessment methodology 1.
You basically ask the question ‘what if?’ – what is the realistic worst
likely outcome, is it:
1.
Environmental/plant damage
2. Minor injury 3. Major injury to one person 4. Major injury to many persons 5. Fatality / fatalities These
five outcomes are called the ‘severity rating’. When you decide the
severity rating of your risk don’t rely on ‘common sense’! Assume that
if someone really daft might do it then it will probably happen!
2.
Judge the probability of harm occurring:
Probability
Description
1. Improbable So unlikely that probability is close to ‘0’ 2. Remote Unlikely though conceivable 3. Probable Not surprised/will occur several times 4. Possible Could occur sometime 5. Likely/Frequent Occurs repeatedly / event only to be expected 3. The risk rating for each hazard is then obtained by multiplying the ‘probability rating’ by the ‘severity rating’. So a
‘likely/frequent’ event (5) that could cause ‘Major injury to one
person’ (3) would have a risk rating of 15. An improbable event (1)
that could cause ‘Major injury to many persons’ (4) would have a risk
rating of 4. A possible event (4) causing minor injury (2) would
have a risk rating of 8. You can then rank these in order of
priority so that the highest score is addressed first. In this case the
order of priority would be 15, 8 and 4.
You should fill in all of this on
the ‘Risk assessment record sheet’ and use the ‘Risk assessment action
table’ to calculate the risk rating and urgency.
Risk / Hazard control This is the most important
element – the control of the risk will determine the success or failure
of effort to reduce the risk of injury or ill health to persons
affected by work activities. Failure can also occur if all the hazards
are not identified correctly or an appropriate judgement made. Actually
take time out to observe the work activities - you will learn much more
than just carrying out this paper based exercise!
There
are 9 basic methods to control risk. 1 is the most effective and 9 is
the least effective:
1. Elimination
2. Substitution by something less hazardous and risky 3. Enclosure 4. Guarding/segregation of people 5. Safe system of work that reduces risk to an acceptable level 6. Adequate supervision 7. Adequate training 8. information/Instruction (signs/handbooks) 9. Personal protective equipment In
many cases you will want to use a combination of these control
measures. It is worth noting that 1 takes the least effort to maintain
control, 9 takes the most effort to maintain control – make your life
easier!
You should fill this in on the
Health and safety action plan.
Recording the assessment The assessment must be recorded
and the significant findings are required to be included. The objective
of the assessment is to improve controls and monitor them to ensure
that they continue to be applied. You need to record the following:
a) hazard/harm
potentials
b) risk ratings which show, c) why each risk has been assessed as more important than some and less important than others, which justifies, d) why existing controls are adequate, or why and what controls are necessary. Maintenance and effectiveness of assessments/controls Not only do the risk assessments
need to be suitable and sufficient but they also need to be maintained
to ensure that they remain valid. This means that they must be kept
under review and updated periodically.
You can best achieve this by a combination of inspection and monitoring techniques and taking corrective/additional action where the need is identified. Conclusion Every day we carry out risk
assessments on our activities and daily life. We know to move the
potted plant off the TV because the cat keeps trying to knock it off,
we know pick up the assortment of toys off the stairs otherwise we
might trip and fall. Where we can’t stop the hazard from occurring we
know that we can do our best to reduce the chances of it causing us
problems. Risk assessment is just about writing it down and
thinking about how to protect the people you care about – yourself,
your employees and your customers.
Here are Downloadable Risk Assessment Tables for Henna
Artists!Click here for html risk assessment table Click here for .xls risk assessment table Click here for .PDFs: Additional References: Government of Canada,
"Occupational Health & Safety": http://www.ccohs.ca/
Occupations & Workplaces section: http://www.ccohs.ca/products/subjects/occupation.html A Guide to Written Workplace Safety http://4safenv.state.nv.us/safety.pdf NIOSH - The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/homepage.html Bibliography A Guide to risk
assessment requirements (HSE) http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg218.pdf
Five steps to Risk Assessment (HSE) http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg163.pdf
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