Four Tips to Up the Ante on Safety
From safely operating metal forming and cutting equipment to helping crews avoid slips, falls, trips and exposure to harmful substances, machine shops are filled with their share of safety challenges. Many of these can be exacerbated when crews are working long hours and at full capacity — but safety can never take a back seat.
By: Erin Bala, director of brand management and innovation at WD-40 Company
Maintaining a safe work environment is critical to not only keeping employees protected, but also reducing risk, avoiding downtime, and ensuring operations are compliant and running smoothly.
At WD-40 Company, we value doing the right thing. This begins by making product safety and consumer health our top priority. We do this by formulating products to be as safe as possible for people and the environment and ensure regulatory compliance for shops. We also value making things better than they are today, and believe the adoption of these tips can make operations even safer:
- Foster a “safety-first” culture: Doing this is no easy feat, and leadership on this important issue should start at the highest levels of an organization and extend to front-line managers and crew supervisors. Safety should be consistently talked about and prioritized at every level. Employees should be empowered to improve safety across the organization and raise red about safety vulnerabilities and risks. Those who help improve safety should be applauded and recognized for their efforts.
- Clean responsibly: Cleaning equipment is an important part of keeping crews safe and ultimately should be helpful, not harmful. Choosing the right cleaners can do double duty of protecting equipment and teams. The WD-40 Specialist® Cleaner & Degreaser is safer than other degreasers on the market, meeting the EPA’s Safer Choice Certification criteria for safety and efficacy. Formulated with a unique bio-solvent that quickly breaks through tough grease and grime, the product also protects against flash rust and is safe for use on most sensitive surfaces. All WD-40® Brand products are formulated with clean solvents and oils that have been treated to remove harmful chemical contaminants.
- Maintain equipment: WD-40 Brand products can help maintain facility assets, which can reduce accidents and injuries. WD-40 Specialist® Gel Lube — like all WD-40 Brand products — is 50-state VOC compliant. The lubricant goes on thick and stays where you spray, making it ideal for use on vertical surfaces and offers non-fling for moving parts such as gears, bearings, cables, chains, rollers and more. The gel lasts on average 15 times longer than other products on the market* and prevents rust and corrosion for up to a year**. Keep rust away with WD-40 Specialist® Rust Remover Soak, which safely and effectively removes rust without acids or caustic chemicals. The formula is non-toxic, non-irritating to skin and works without harming surfaces. By using these and other WD-40 Brand products, facilities can be confident their products are safe and VOC compliant, thus relieving stress of audits, and the time and cost of dealing with potential legal and regulatory issues.
- Never stop learning: At WD-40 Company, creating a learning and teaching culture is part of our DNA. Shops can also benefit by encouraging teams to constantly grow their knowledge and skill sets. One simple way to do this is to take WD-40 Brand’s chemical safety training program, where you can learn the science behind our safer products, what to look for when choosing maintenance products, and how to take precautions around harmful chemicals.
A focus on safety ensures benefits for all. At WD-40 Company, product safety and consumer health are of the highest priority. www.wd40.com/industrial.com
*Test Lab: Petro-Lubricant Laboratories Inc. (Lafayette,NJ); ASTM D5620A Test date: 04/2020.
**Independent testing conducted in salt spray chamber. Results may vary depending on extreme conditions.
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