The Impact Of ISO 45001 On Safety And Risk Communication According To Clarion Safety Systems
MILFORD, Pa. (PRWEB) July 31, 2018 -- In Compliance Magazine’s July issue features industry insight from Clarion Safety Systems, a leading designer and manufacturer of safety signs and safety labels, discussing the importance of the new ISO 45001 standard – the first global standard for occupational health and safety management systems – its impact on risk communication, product safety and workplace safety.
In Compliance is a top resource for electrical engineering professionals, delivering the latest news, standards updates, technical explanations and guidance for engineers. Clarion is a regular contributor to the publication, with articles informed by the company’s nearly three decades of experience serving its customers, as well as its deep involvement in the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards committees related to safety signs and labels.
“If you polled the typical product safety engineer on which ISO standard relates to their products’ warning, they’d likely say ISO 3864. And, it’s true that that standard has important guidelines for product safety, including direct implications for the design and use of symbols,” says Angela Lambert, head of standards compliance at Clarion. “But, when you step back and look at how ISO 45001 is beginning to shape safety and risk communication in new ways, it’s interesting to see the parallels to products – as well as potential gains for product safety.”
Several of Clarion’s safety experts, including Lambert, are members of the U.S. technical advisory group (TAG) to ISO 45001, and were involved in the standards’ multi-year development and refinement process. This past spring, ISO 45001 was published, giving organizations in the U.S. and around the world a structure to plan, support, implement and evaluate their efforts to eliminate or reduce risks to workers.
Clarion’s article discusses key information on ISO 45001, its parallels to product safety and its overall impact on safety and risk communication. Among the links to ISO 45001 and product safety noted in the article are:
- A systems mentality to creating a safety program: It’s important to look at the safety of your products holistically and on an ongoing basis – both across their lifecycle and in terms of all the products you manufacture. In the same vein, facility safety using an ISO 45001 methodology is an ongoing, continuous process to set benchmarks and make improvements.
- The foundational element of risk assessment: Identifying potential hazards, controlling actions related to them, and communicating about residual risk is a key part of an ISO 45001-based safety management system. Many product safety professionals recognize that an effective approach to implementing the hierarchy of controls to reduce risks that can’t be eliminated or substituted is often to layer multiple controls. That’s a mentality, the article contends, that may begin to be more widely embraced in workplaces enacting a systems approach to safety.
- Consistency on warnings on products and in workplaces: To bring about awareness of residual hazards in the workplace, using the latest standards-based best practices in signage is needed for effective risk communication. According to Clarion, the consistency that will come by using the best practice formats for safety labels on products and for safety signs on plant walls will help to drive better visual safety and risk communication.
The article is available through In Compliance Magazine’s website. To learn more, visit Clarion’s comprehensive Learning Center, which includes resources on ISO 45001.
ABOUT CLARION SAFETY SYSTEMS
Clarion Safety Systems, LLC, is the leading designer and manufacturer of visual safety solutions that help customers in more than 180 industries worldwide to make their products and premises safer. Clarion offers a full range of standard and custom products including machinery safety labels, environmental and facility safety signs, pipe and valve identification markings, lockout/tagout products, and safety-grade photoluminescent egress path-marking escape systems. Founded in 1990, the company continues to play a leading role in the development and writing of international and national standards for safety signs, labels, and markings. Clarion is headquartered at 190 Old Milford Road in Milford, PA, 18337, and online at http://www.clarionsafety.com.
Erin Earley, Clarion Safety Systems, http://www.clarionsafety.com, +1 570-296-5686 Ext: 228, [email protected]
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