You want your employees to be safe at work. But if you think about it for just a minute, you also have an interest in keeping your employees safe when they’re not at work. It’s even to your advantage (and theirs) to help them keep their families safe at home.
Employers need their people to be at work and productive. Employees need to be at work and earning a paycheck. If your employee, John, has his vision damaged because of a chemical splash, the schedule is adversely affected—whether the accident happened at work or at home. The framing still needs to get done, and John can’t work as a carpenter while his eyes heal. If Ron’s little girl is in the hospital for chemical burns, he either won’t be at work, or he’ll be very distracted while he is at work. Either way, Ron isn’t being productive. Worse, if he’s working but distracted, he could be putting others in danger.
Here are some resources you can use to help you safely handle chemical hazards that are common in most home
- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has put together this webpage that discusses how to prevent and how to handle chemical emergencies that can occur in the home:
https://www.ready.gov/household-chemical-emergencies. - The American Lung Association offers information on the hazards of common household cleaning supplies here:
https://www.lung.org/clean-air/indoor-air/indoor-air-pollutants/cleaning-supplies-household-chem. - The Environmental Protection Agency has a webpage that gives you information on how to safely dispose of many different types of household hazardous waste:
https://www.epa.gov/hw/household-hazardous-waste-hhw.