Best Practices for Storing Hazardous Materials

If your business handles hazardous materials, it is crucial to store them properly to ensure the safety of your employees, the general public, and the surrounding environment. Storing hazardous materials correctly is essential in preventing accidents and ensuring compliance with safety regulations. As a business owner, you have a responsibility to manage these materials correctly and adhere to established best practices. If not, you could be putting yourself at risk of fines as well as risking putting the people around you in danger, should an accident occur such as a spillage or a leak. The consequences of not doing this could go beyond fines but also involve people being hurt and injured.

From understanding and complying with industry regulations, preparing for emergencies and using the correct containers to limiting access and training employees, below we look into five best practices for storing hazardous materials. Keep on reading to learn more about our recommendations and why these should be a best practice to follow when storing hazardous materials.

Five Best Practices for Storing Hazardous Materials

Understand And Comply With Industry Regulations

It’s important that you understand and comply with industry regulations. Each industry has different regulations they have to follow when storing hazardous materials, some will be standard across the board, and others will be unique to the industry they operate in.

Ensure you are regularly reading up on regulations, in case anything changes, and make sure you are training your employees on this as well. You are responsible for your employees as well as your own actions and could be fined, should a review be taken out and it is discovered that you don’t look after hazardous materials correctly.

Use the Correct Containers for Storing Hazardous Materials

When dealing with hazardous materials, always store them in the correct containers and never cut corners to save time. Different containers are designed in certain ways, to ensure the hazard is looked after and isn’t a potential risk to others and if you go against this, you could put the public or your employees at risk. It’s important that all your containers are clearly labelled so that you can see the material’s name, the potential hazard and any handling instructions when using the hazard.

Limit Access and Use Secure Storage

Not everyone has to have access to certain hazardous materials. By limiting access, you instantly reduce the risk of something going wrong, increasing safety. Store in locked cabinets, rooms or cages for high-risk hazards (Check out these storage solutions). When storing these, ensure they are regularly checked, to make sure everything is intact and for any high-level hazards, having CCTV may also be advised. When an employee is checking on the hazard, create a checklist which they can follow, which keeps them safe as well as the hazard safe.

Train Employees on Safe Handling and Storing Hazardous Materials

A lot of accidents happen in the workplace due to a lack of knowledge. To help reduce accidents, training your employees on safety and handling hazardous materials can be very effective and is a best practice that everyone should follow.

You should provide training on proper storage, handling, and emergency response procedures for hazardous materials. This can be done through in-house training, online training or booking your employees to go on an external course. It can also be useful to book refresher courses for your employees as over time small details can be forgotten as well as new practices that should be followed. Ensure that the correct training is given as part of the onboarding process for all new employees so that it doesn’t get missed.

Prepare For Emergencies

Although we hope an emergency doesn’t happen, it can happen which is why it’s important you prepare for emergencies. Make sure you keep a fire extinguisher near a potentially hazardous area, spill kits should also be purchased as well as first aid kits, in case something happens. Drills should also be practised which simulate an emergency, to make sure you and your employees are prepared and know what to do if anything does happen in the future.

We hope we have given you some useful information on best practices for storing hazardous materials. Along with our recommendations, there are various other best practices which you should follow, which is why it’s important to keep doing your research. Safety is an ongoing process that requires attention on a regular basis, especially when storing hazardous materials. This guide should give you a more comprehensive overview of the best practices for storing hazardous materials and help your business going forward. You can be more compliant, protect those that work for you and avoid being fined. What best practices do you follow for storing hazardous materials? Which of the above recommendations did you find most useful? Is there anything missing in our guide that you think we should be adding? Let us know in the comment box below, we look forward to hearing from you.