Internship-Week 6:Tuesday

It's training day again! I like it for many reasons, but if you ask me which is the most dominant reason of all, I'll tell you with a glee it's "free food and beverages". Okay. Cut to the point. The training is actually on the topic Environment, Health & Safety aka EHS conducted by the one and only certified Safety & Health Officer (SHO), Ms. Rosmiza. In this matter, we, participants including me are 6 in total, start off by being informed of 2 ISO that the company is abiding namely OHSAS 18001:2007 and ISO 14001:2004. As a matter of fact, the company even set up an Environment, Health & Safety Management System (EMS) for the purpose of environment image enhancement, potential cost saving and the beneficiaries-employees all. Under OHSAS 18001, there's HIRARC-Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment & Risk Control while under ISO 1400 there's EIA for Environmental Impact & Aspect. For HIRARC, we need to learn to identify the source(s) of hazard and its risk stands for likelihood of occurrence and severity of consequence. For EIA, aspect refers to how a task is related to environment while impact refers to effect on the environment.

After the break at 10am, the session resumes with briefing on how to handle oneself for example when there is a fire outbreak or accident occurs, next is some basic fire fighting 101 and instructions on how to use a spill kit available in the company. What amazes me the most is the depth of the speaker's expertise as she recounts some of the worst accidents in her odd years as SHO. She even corrected me at one point when I am asked to present my action in front of others in times of an accident. It's like this, I suggested reducing blood loss by applying pressure on the wrist when a colleague's finger is caught in an accident. However, from her experience, this method is not effective and inexperience handling will cause permanent damage to the victim as blood is stopped for too long. So, the speaker suggested another viable alternative which is to keep the injured part, ie finger above the level of the heart. Moving on, there are some documents that are important in ensuring employee safety and one of them is Material Safety Data sheet (MSDS). Provided by the manufacturer, this will provide comprehensive information from product content to handling and more. Meanwhile, the hierarchy for risk control from descending order of priority-eliminate, replace, engineering control & Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

Following global outcry, the company's management also complies with Restriction of Hazardous Substance (RoHS) in their products such as lead and mercury. Last but not least, once again another written exam as the session ends at exactly 4pm. This brings back memories but unfortunately not very pleasant ones on exam, still hey who's complaining when you can get a free meal in a day. Hehe.