Having a spill kit on hand on your work site can mean the difference between work continuing or work stopping for the day, or in the worst case scenario the difference between an injury onsite and everyone remaining safe.
While there’s a direct impact to your site if there’s a spill, there’s also often an indirect environmental impact to surrounding flora and fauna. For the productivity of your site, for the safety of your workers and for the wellbeing of the surrounding environment, having a spill kit is an essential – and if you have hazardous chemicals on your worksite then it is a legal requirement.
Learn about the different types of spill kits available, what makes the most effective spill kits, and where to find them for your specific worksite.
What is a spill kit?
A spill kit includes everything your worksite needs if dangerous chemicals are accidentally released.
Spill kits can come in a few different forms; sometimes they come in a wheelie bin and other times they’re packaged like a parcel. They’re always portable and easily moved from one location to another.
There are lots of different types of spill kits but most of them include Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), absorbents, containment booms and waste disposal bags.
Why does my workplace need a spill kit?
By law, most countries require sites to have spill kits available, including Australia where the Workplace Health and Safety Act notes that businesses have to ensure sites are equipped to deal with spills.
Along with the legal requirement, a spill kit keeps the people on your site safe and is your responsibility as their employer to provide a safe work environment.
What are the different kinds of spill kits?
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- General purpose spill kits: this includes absorbent materials to help stop the spread of the spill, along with instructions and PPE.
- Hazchem spill kits: these include extra-absorbent material, designed to be used with hazardous materials like acids, caustics, fuels, oils, solvents and agricultural chemicals.
- Oil and fuel spill kits: these include pads that are made to absorb oil.
- Lab and medical spill kits: working in a laboratory means exposure to a wider variety of chemicals and so these kits have absorbent material that works on all substances except hydrofluoric acid.
- Marine spill kits: these are designed to help protect the marine environment and absorb spills when they happen at sea.
What makes an effective spill kit?
The more specific a spill kit the better and it’s important for everything in a spill kit to be correctly labelled.
A spill kit is only as good as the people using it so make sure your employees know where the spill kits are stored and how to use them. Spill Station not only supplies a wide variety of spill kits but they can help train your staff, get in touch with them today: https://www.spillstation.com.au/contact-us/
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