Importance of Emergency Shower and Eyewash Stations

Posted by alexstephen on January 17th, 2014

If you have corrosive or hazardous chemicals in your facility, it is most recommended to have emergency showers or eyewashes. These equipments can provide first aid in an event of an accident. When you have a large number of workers, you will have to decide on the number of emergency equipments because that would be the need of the hour during accidents. Sometimes, it is not practically possible to install plumbed emergency showers at all places in the facility. In such instances, the portable emergency shower will be the best option for you.

When you are selecting the type of emergency equipment for your facility, you will need answers to some key questions. Where do you place or position the emergency equipment? How many units are needed? What is the cost of maintenance of these equipments? Once you have answers to these questions, you can go ahead and select the most appropriate emergency equipment. After you have bought and installed the emergency or safety showers, you will have to have appropriate signage so that people know where to find the emergency equipment.

Special training can be conducted for the workers to explain them the procedure of using the emergency equipment. After the training, mock drills can also be conducted at regular intervals. With the help of these mock drills, line managers or floor managers can ascertain if their team members are fully prepared for different emergency situations.

Typically, the emergency equipment training sessions may not take more than a couple of hours. Hence, it is recommended that most workers get this training even before they start using the hazardous chemicals or materials. Self-help is a concept that needs to be inculcated in the workers when they are working in hazardous places. According to this concept, the injured worker needs to pull up all courage and make an effort to go to the emergency facewash stations or the safety showers. Most of the showers or face wash stations are simple to use, hence, the injured person will not have a problem in using them.

When there is an accident at a large scale, many people can be injured. In such instances, the portable eyewashes or showers come in handy. The biggest advantage of the portable eyewashes or showers is that they can be carried from one place to another with ease. Some portable eyewashes or showers are even of the size of suitcases, which can be dismantled and installed in just a matter of a few minutes.

When you are injured in an accident due to hazardous chemicals, the golden rule is that you should rush to the nearest emergency eyewash or shower station and subject yourself to flowing water. When gentle flowing water is poured on you during an emergency, you will immediately feel better. Water soothes the pain and also dilutes the action of the hazardous chemicals or substances. Hence, you will find that in most emergency stations, water is used as a cooling and diluting agent.