OPERATING AIR COMPRESSORS SAFELY

The dangers presented by compressed air units are often understated by the industries and facilities they are used in. Being producers of high-pressure air, it can be easy to assume that their use is mostly harmless. This outlook unfortunately often leads to severe injuries, damage, and in some cases even death.

Whether your facility owns or hires compressed air units, understanding their dangers and how to avoid them through proper use and care is critical for the protection of personnel, processes, equipment, and structures.

So let’s take a moment to explore some of these dangers in greater detail, and the steps that your facility and operators can take to avoid their pitfalls.

Before any of your operators start using compressors you need to ensure that they fully understand the risks associated with doing so. While the risks to processes and equipment are important to keep in mind, it’s the risk associated to personal injury that can present itself without warning, and can have the most devastating effects.

Being a producer of extreme pressures, compressors can cause untold damage to the human body. Everything from the obvious like missing fingers and abrasions come into play, but there are also concerns like embolism, damaged ear drums, ruptured organs or injuries resulting in loss of eyesight, to think about.

These sorts of injuries are more common than you would think, and almost always result from a misuse of equipment.

Whether you opt to buy or hire compressed air equipment, you need to ensure that they meet a standard of quality that adds to the protection of personnel and your facility.

You need to ensure that they are in safe and operable condition by carefully inspecting them before any transactions have been made, if their condition is dubious, it is better to avoid using them.

This also means that you will need to partner up with a reliable supplier of compressor equipment and accessories, so that you can vouch for the condition and quality of any new equipment being used.

Continual maintenance is essential for ensuring that air compressors operate optimally and safely, particularly if your units have started to show signs of aging.

It can be tempting to push back maintenance tasks until they are more convenient, but this is only broadening the window of opportunity for risks and hazards to occur.

Be sure to stick to routine maintenance schedules, even when it seems like equipment doesn’t need it, because it’ll be those latent defects that go unseen which might cause the most damage.

In any work area where air compressing equipment is being used, you need to ensure that there are no obstacles that may present risks of injury or damage.

One of the best ways to do this is to simply keep facility floors clear wherever possible. Declutter operating areas to make sure that no snags, tangles, or tips occur that might lead to accidents.

While operating an air compressor might seem straightforward at first sight, they can be complicated to use. When used without a proper understanding of their operations and hazards, misuse can lead to accidents that cause serious injuries, or maybe even death.

To ensure that this never happens in your facility, it is wise to prioritise operator training for use of compressed air equipment for anyone in your facility who is charged with using them.

Personal protective gear is a must with almost any industrial equipment, and air compressors are no different. Protective gloves, goggles, and boots are possibly the most important in this regard since air compressors can make short work of fingers, toes, and eyes when an accident occurs.

Additionally, to ensure that skin, organs, and body parts are protected, robust overalls should always be worn when operating air compressors, especially at particularly high pressures.

We at Compressor Valves & Accessories are dedicated to ensuring the safety of our clients by providing high-quality compressors, as well as related maintenance services to ensure their condition in the long-term. If you would like to know more about our complete range of offers, be sure to visit our website today for details.