CHICAGO — A drycleaning plant looks calm from the counter. In the back, however, it’s steam, solvent, hot presses and moving machinery, all within reach of people who need to fully understand what any of it could do to them.
“Primary physical hazards in a drycleaning operation vary depending on the employee,” says Mike Puppe, general manager of Tiffany Couture Cleaners in Las Vegas. “Within the plant, high noise levels, hot and humid conditions, burns from steam and hot water, and injuries from presses, irons, conveyors and other moving machinery are all hazards. We have an automated system, and those things have pinch and crush points.”
Where the Real Risk Lives
And while all these obvious factors need to be taken into account, the reasons for emergency room and urgent care visits are often less dramatic.
“I don’t hear about many issues like solvent exposure. It’s pretty rare,” says Jon Meijer, director of membership at the Drycleaning & Laundry Institute (DLI). “I think the biggest ones are always going to be the same: slips and falls, uneven flooring, a laundry cart in the way that somebody doesn’t see.” Reaching motions and steam exposure are other frequent culprits, he adds, tied to pulling clothes off the line.
Puppe’s list runs longer because his plant also runs a delivery fleet.
“Drivers go out and run into different problems, such as motor vehicle accidents, aggressive animals and weather conditions,” he says. “If they have a huge route, they can get crunched for time, and that puts them in a false sense of urgency. Fatigue on long routes is a major factor, too.”
The Bottom of the Pyramid
Heath Robinson, CSP, ARM, head of safety consulting at World Insurance Associates, starts most conversations about safety culture with the distinction between proactive and reactive management.
“A proactive safety-management style means the management team is looking at the facilities and the behaviors of employees before an incident occurs,” he says. “Anything we do after an incident to prevent another one like it is reactive.”
The framework he leans on to make that case is familiar to safety professionals across industries: the incident pyramid, sometimes called the accident triangle. This pyramid holds that a wide base of minor unsafe acts sits beneath a much smaller number of injuries, and eventually a single serious incident or fatality.
“It helps owners understand that serious injuries rarely come out of nowhere,” Robinson says. “Long before you have that major claim, there are usually hundreds or even thousands of warning signs: shortcuts, near misses, spills, blocked exits, unreported maintenance issues or employees bypassing procedures.”
Every unsafe act, he says, is an early indicator of future costs: “An owner who only reacts after an injury is managing the most expensive part of the pyramid. Manage the unsafe acts and near misses instead, and you’re controlling the loss before it ever becomes a claim.”
Building Safety Culture from Day One
For cleaners who make safety a priority, building it into the company’s culture starts before an employee’s first shift, not after an incident.
“Our safety training begins on day one, at onboarding,” Puppe says. “Every employee is given a handbook with a chapter on safety, and they sign it to confirm they understand the hazards and conditions. Before their first day of work, we also walk them through the plant and introduce them to the specific hazards tied to their jobs.”
He points to marked-off machinery, yellow guards over conveyor pinch points, and labeled chemicals as things new hires see firsthand rather than simply read about.
Meijer describes the same instinct at the industry level, which should be tailored to the role.
“Training depends on the position,” he says. “Counter staff and customer service reps need a different kind of training than someone working in the back on a press or doing stain removal. It comes down to knowing how to read chemical labels, where to find information in an emergency, and where the eyewash stations are.”
Robinson frames documentation as the difference between training that counts and training that doesn’t.
“As in many lines of business, if you didn’t document it, it didn’t happen,” he says. “In shops that don’t document training, I usually find inconsistent onboarding and no proof that employees were trained on chemicals or equipment. When a claim occurs, the employer has a harder time defending it, whether to an insurer or to OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), because there’s no paperwork to back up their side.”
Come back Thursday for Part 2 of this series, where we’ll explore OSHA’s most-cited list and the importance of getting employee input on safety.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Dave Davis at [email protected].
