Start off with water the first element
so it says here potable drinking water must be made available at no cost to be
employee.
So there has to be some way that you're
you can sort of verify that is potable water did it come from a reliable source,
did it come from say a city water system
okay if your taking it from a well, Cal/OSHA may ask you if they're is a question or
complaint about that the inspector can ask you to verify that is truly
potable water.
It meets potable standards
maintain at all times sufficient quantities of cool potable drinking
water enough to provide at least one quart
per employee per hour
so employee works an eight-hour day what's the volume of water
for an eight hour day?
Two gallons right? Four quarts in a gallon, 8 hours in a day
Right, 2 gallons.
What if you have a big crew
and you can't provide all of that water at the beginning of the day?
What can you do?
Provision to replenish..
everybody here that?
So in your written procedures, right you're going to have a procedure to
replenish, so in other words
in your procedure its gonna say i'm gonna check the water
at a set frequency and we are going to refill the water as we go throughout the
day.
Water must be fit to drink,
water containers cannot be refilled from non potable sources..
you know we've heard stories uh...
farm workers suggesting to us
that they were asked to go over to the canal and take the igloo and dip it into
the canal
okay,
we’ve heard stories of water coming from not potable you know sources,
so make sure that you can verify that the waters potable as I’ve said before,
care must be taken to prevent contamination the drinking water
supplied to the workers.
You know, previous to this there was a slide last year there was a picture of a
garden hose with a red slash through it
and there was sort of a misconception that
you could not use a garden hose to fill your your containers for water
and that's not true!
At the end of the day whatever water that you're supplying to your employees it
needs to be potable, needs to be suitably cool,
needs to be in a sanitary container,
that...that's...that's the bottom line.
The fact that you used a garden hose at the garden hoses sanitary clean
okay to fill it that's uh... that's okay.
The picture here kinda shows a little worst-case scenario.
They've got the hose now in a real
dirty liquid container here
and i guess the suggestion is that this hose would be used to fill your potable
water container.
That's what we're saying no to.
Implement and maintain effective replenishment procedures when
commencing the shift with smaller quantities, we mentioned that here's
another container looks little dirty inside
okay
has a can down inside of it,
so
typically what Cal/OSHA inforcement is going to do, they're going to come up and
they're gonna run a little of your water across the back of their hand and feel
that suitably cool.
Or the inside of there forearm And feel for the difference in
temperature.
They're gonna open the igloo if you’ve got an igloo out there they'll look down
inside of it
make sure it's clean,
so they're just going to do a check
like that.
Okay locate the water containers as close as practicable
given the working conditions in layout of the worksite.
Maintain it readily accessible and encourage the frequent drinking of water.
Actually says that in the regulation - encourage the frequent drinking of
Water.
So
if you've got the water as close as possible that is going to encourage
frequent drinking of water.
If the water suitably cool
that's going to encourage the frequent drinking of water.
So you think about that.. so you have to do the best you can to get it as close
as possible.
Uh... individual I see a lot of people with
water bottles here, individual a water containers
are okay.
As long as they are kept in a sanitary Condition.
The construction industry actually has that written into the regulations
Now,
specific to allowing for
personal water containers, water bottles,
or the single use drinking cups.. you've got to get those choices.. it specifies that.
But the key is that you got the water bottle with you
make sure that it is in a sanitary condition.
That’s the key, no different than that
sort of uh... you know mother container there they can be taking the water from.
So i like the idea of people having water with them people are much more
likely to drink the water it they've got it with them.
Okay in agriculture we've had situations where
it's very difficult with workers doing piece work.. to try to get them to stop and
drink water.
Difficult situation..
So what some employers have gone to they've got some sort of audible
device.
You know an air horn,
a whistle,
something where it's their policy it's written into their policies that the
workers, when they blow the whistle or below the air horn,
the workers will stop working,
and come over take a drink water.
And it's in their procedures that
the warmer it gets the more they blow the whistle.
Because they want them to stop
take a quick little break,
the idea here is we drink small quantities of water throughout the day..
that’s how we stay hydrated.
If you wait until you're thirsty..
your lips are dry, your mouths dry, your really thirsty..
you're probably already on the way to being dehydrated or dehydrated,
so you don't wanna wait.
This is a tough one, because you don't know
how your workers present in the morning when they show up for work.
You don't know if their hydrated or not.
They don't have a big H or not on their forehead when they show up to work,
that's a tough one.
You don't know if that employee had the twelve pack the night before
at the barbecue,
and then, got the big code red mountain dew our energy drink on the way
to work full a caffeine.
Which is a dehydrator,
so now they're showing up to work and their thirsty cause their
really dehydrated maybe even a little hung over,
and so they're drinking and drinking a bunch of water trying to get hydrated,
they're already behind the curve!
So their at a deficit already from a hydration standpoint.
So it's really important from a training standpoint you let your employees know
when they present in the morning they show up in the morning to start work
right they need to be hydrated.
That's part of their responsibility!
Anything about water?
Any questions about water?
I'm a home brewer..
and so you can take containers
and you can use uh... I believe it works out to
about a
around a five percent bleach solution.
There's contact time to.. that you have to leave it in contact with the surface,
and then you can just.. you don't have to rinse it you can just dump that out and
you can go in,
without rinsing.
But i think if you get on the internet you'll be able to see what those
concentrations of contact times are
but you can actually use household bleach.. in fact a lot of the
public water systems
actually just have
you know peristalic pump injection systems of the well head.
That actually just inject
uh...
sodium hypochlorite
so that uh...
actually to sanitize our water.
Other questions about water.. How about Gatorade?
I usually get that question about Gatorade?
Cal/OSHA’s position is that water,
so this quart per hour, this two gallons per eight-hour shift,
if you want to add on
and supplement that, with gatorade
then that's okay,
but you know the rule of thumb they're going to be looking when they
come out to do inspections, they're gonna be looking for the water when they're
out there.