In general principle, most people know how to use a safety shower or eyewash station. Most people do not give their design and use a lot of thought…until they need one. While there are some guidelines as to how to maintain and operate them, some nuances do not become visible until there has been a chemical exposure. Rather than waiting for those to occur, this article is geared toward pointing out these issues ahead of time, so that laboratories and manufacturing facilities can understand the hazards and maintenance requirements.

Safety shower and eyewash station design

Modern safety and eyewash station designs are combined into one unit. The idea is that if someone has been exposed to a chemical, they will need both treatment to their whole body and their eyes. Older designs have separate stations for showers and eyewash stations, and these setups are becoming less common.

A laboratory safety shower and eyewash station. There are two fire blankets located nearby. There is a triangle handle for activating the shower. Behind the shower is a water sock for absorbing some of the water during testing and maintenance. Source: Seth Price

Typically, the safety shower handle is pulled down to start the flow of water. In order to shut it off, it must be pushed up. The eyewash operates the same way. The idea is that if someone is exposed to a chemical, they should be able to start the flow of water with little effort and then do literally nothing to maintain it. It must be manually shut off.

Maintenance and testing

Showers and eyewash stations are perfect places for bacteria to grow. A pipe with standing water is a favorable environment, and if the water is not removed and replaced frequently, it will stagnate and can become a source of illness. Furthermore, rust, scale, and other particles accumulate. Then, if the shower is used, the victim will get sprayed with dirty water.

Most local standards will call for testing safety showers and eyewash stations in heavily used areas at least once a week. Testing involves running both the shower and the eyewash station separately for a few minutes to purge the water lines and ensure adequate water flow. Under the most ideal circumstances, the flow rates at each location are measured and compared to previous data and local standards.

The reality is that this is rarely done. A quick glance at the average undergraduate safety shower will show a dusty eyewash bowl and a yellowing test tag. Instead of trying to improve testing all at once, start out simple -- start testing once a month, maybe even without measuring the flow rate quantitatively. If someone was in the shower and covered in a chemical, does the water flow look adequate to remove the chemical? For sticky resins, this might require a higher flow rate than for water-based chemicals.

If the flow is not very strong, the shower head or eyewash nozzles can be removed and cleaned or replaced. It is common for scale to build up in these fixtures, and that is often the source of low flow rates. The next step is to consult a plumber, if the cleaning process does not fix low flow rates.

Every safety shower and eyewash station should have a tag affixed to it with a testing log. Typically, it has spaces for the date, the initials of the person who tested it, and comments. This should be filled out. It is also helpful to keep an electronic record of the test as well. In a chemical exposure incident, the tag may become damaged with the large amount of water. Keeping this record can help during OSHA investigations, should one be necessary.

Cleanup

This is a hot topic in safety showers. Once a safety shower is used, different facilities will have different cleanup methods. Some will drain directly into the regular wastewater system. The thought is that the constant flow of water will dilute the chemicals enough that they are not a threat to the wastewater system or the environment. This is not always the case.

Other locations do not have floor drains. This way, chemicals are not allowed to enter the municipal waste stream. However, fifteen minutes in the safety shower will dump many gallons of water on the ground. This contaminated water can seep through the walls and drip to floors beneath, and the undrained water can be a hazard to rescuers. Also, after the incident, the water must be cleaned up. This means the contaminated water must be soaked up and put into waste containers- likely exposing multiple people to the contaminants. If the mop bucket is dumped down the drain, it is no different than plumbing a drain to the shower anyhow.

Other considerations

In the old days of manufacturing and laboratory work, chemical processing was performed by men alone. Should one of them be exposed to a chemical, they would remove all contaminated clothing while in the safety shower. Today, the situation is different.

Imagine a freshman laboratory experience with 25 students. One student gets a chemical on her clothes. The effects of the exposure may not be imminent. She may avoid the safety shower because it would mean removing her clothes in front of her class, and concealing the chemical exposure could have long-lasting health consequences.

Instead, safety showers should include a shower curtain that can be easily pulled around the person in the shower. If a curtain is not available, a large fire blanket can be used, but that will require one or two people to hold it in place while the victim showers.

After the shower, the victim should not put on the contaminated clothes. In a pinch, they can be wrapped up in the fire blanket. Alternatively, some inexpensive Tyvek coveralls in various sizes can be stored somewhere in the facility. Some students even keep a change of clothes somewhere on site that can be retrieved in an emergency.

Another consideration is that safety showers are often located in the corner of the room. It is tempting to pile things around them, sometimes as temporary storage. As part of the maintenance and testing routine, inspectors should check and ensure that the area around the safety equipment is not obstructed. Injured people should be able to reach a safety shower without obstacles in under 10 seconds. It may help to place tape on the floor to mark a clear area around the safety shower.

Final thoughts

Some of this can be overwhelming at first. For some facilities, this means testing stations that are infrequently tested, and that means more time out of the technician’s day. Some of these guidelines have an additional expense. The expression says, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and a laboratory or manufacturing facility’s safety protocols can take time to implement and are constantly being revised. By making small, incremental changes, safety can be improved significantly without seriously impacting business needs or placing a bunch of unenforceable, hard to follow rules in place.