THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT BEING A DOT HAZMAT EMPLOYER
WHY YOUR EMPLOYEES NEED TO BE DOT HAZMAT TRAINED
If your company handles hazardous materials, even occasionally or in an indirect way, your employees may need DOT hazmat training. Non-compliance with DOT regulations is both illegal and dangerous.
If your employees come into contact with hazardous waste as part of their job description, they need to be trained in handling hazardous materials according to the standards developed by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). Failing to comply with DOT hazmat training can have serious and costly consequences for your business and the health and safety of your workers.
Who Needs DOT Hazmat Training in Arkansas?
U.S. DOT hazmat training regulations apply to any company that has employees who perform duties that are in any way governed by the DOT Hazardous Materials Regulations, including:
Packaging, labeling, or marking hazardous materials for transport
Loading, unloading, or transporting hazardous materials
Receiving or forwarding hazmat items
Creating or testing hazardous materials packaging
Determining if a material is hazardous or classifying hazardous materials
Determining if any placards, labels, or markings need to be applied to hazmat packaging
Filling out shipping papers for hazmat
Responding to reports of any hazmat incidents including leaks, spills, and damaged packages
This is not an all-inclusive list. Employees who supervise any of the above duties, and any contractors hired to perform them, must also be fully hazmat trained.
Employee training must be repeated every three years, and your company must maintain records of recurrent training for at least three years. Training records must also be kept for 90 days after any hazmat-trained employee leaves the company. Additional training is also required if the DOT issues any new hazmat rules or revises existing ones.
These rules apply to all companies regardless of size or the amount of hazardous materials they process. Non-compliance with DOT hazmat training can be expensive. If an inspector finds training violations, the minimum fine is $450 per employee, per day, and can be as high as $75,000 per day for each violation.
Hazmat Training and Safety
The point of hazardous materials training is ensuring the safety of your employees and others along the supply chain who handle hazardous materials. There were over 16,000 accidents and incidents involving hazardous materials last year —including spills, leaks, fires, and chemical exposure—resulting in 175 serious injuries, 11 fatalities, and more than $110 million in property damage.
Safety standards require that employees know how to identify, load, transport, and store hazardous materials and appropriately respond to an incident. Hazmat workers who are not sufficiently trained are a dangerous liability. Make sure your workers are trained correctly and your company is in compliance.
SEA can customize our training courses to your site-specific needs. We offer on-site presentations as well as open enrollment classes at our Little Rock facility. Our next DOT Hazmat training will be October 2-9, 2015. Sign up before the seats are gone!
For more information about DOT hazmat training in Arkansas, contact SEA, Inc. at 501-568-3111 to speak with one of our training specialists.
A Quick Guide for Industrial and Manufacturing Facilities By Keina Jennings, CEO/CFO, SEA
By Don Harkness, East Coast Regional Manager, SEA Ladder Inspection Safety At-A-Glance Ladders of all types are useful in the workplace. They are tools that allow workers to safely reach another level. Working at elevated levels poses plenty of risks, ones that have been covered in many regulatory training courses you have attended. Walking, Working Surfaces and Fall protection all focus heavily on the different hazards, of which SEA would be honored to share with you, but today, I want to focus on what needs to happen prior to using the ladder. The Right Tool for the Job And make no mistake, ladders are tools, and only perform as well as we, the operators, allow them to. So, what do we need to consider when picking the right ladder for our job? Several key factors include, but aren’t limited to: What are we doing? What style do you need? Step Ladders, extension ladders, and platform ladders all serve different purposes! What is the weight limit of my ladder? Note that the weight limit includes you and all the tools/equipment you are wearing, including fall protection! What height do I need my ladder to be? Ladders come in all shapes and sizes, so ensure you pick one that allows you to not put yourself at risk, even if it takes a little extra time to go and get it! What material should my ladder be made of? Most ladders are fiberglass but also come in several other materials. Make sure you plan for the task and don’t pick a metal ladder when working with electricity, for example The Most Important Step After choosing the ladder for our task, we need to perform an all-around inspection of the ladder. How often do we need to perform this inspection? Does it need to be documented? Ladders must be inspected before every use to ensure that no damage has occurred. As far as documentation goes, it is required that a documented inspection occur once a year, but your company policy can dictate more frequent documented inspections.
By Alison Jennings, VP Operations, SEA Sometimes it takes a real-life moment to remind us how quickly routine tasks can turn into injuries. Recently, I had a reminder of just how quickly something simple can turn into an injury. I was hanging a picture frame at home. Nothing complicated—just one of those quick projects you knock out in a few minutes. I picked the frame up by the sides to move it into position. As I lifted it, the bottom of the frame suddenly gave out. The glass dropped straight down and landed directly on the top of my bare foot. Within seconds, what started as a simple task turned into a trip to urgent care. The cut was deep enough that I ended up needing eight stitches. Looking back, there were a few things I didn’t think about in that moment. I was barefoot. I didn’t consider the possibility that the frame might break. I didn’t think about what could happen if the glass slipped or fell. It really wasn’t a dangerous job. I wasn’t using power tools or heavy equipment. I was just hanging a picture. But that’s the reality of many injuries—they don’t happen during obviously dangerous activities. They happen during everyday tasks when we assume nothing will go wrong.