Over Use of Cleaning Supplies Can Be Dangerous – A Workplace Safety Issue

If own a small business, or you are the manager for a franchise chain outlet, then you need to pay special attention to your younger workers, and any workers that you have that speak broken English about their use of cleaning supplies. All too often, the mixing of cleaning supplies and chemicals is done on the property. Unfortunately, workers tend to mix the cleaning chemicals too strong and they put them in squirt bottles and use way too much.

Not only does this end up damaging, tabletops, coatings, paints, and windowpanes, but it also discolors toilet seats in the bathroom, and stainless steel equipment. And that is the least of your worries. The younger generation often doesn’t notice when they use too much cleaning chemical, because it doesn’t affect them very much, but older workers, are affected, as their lungs are not as strong as a young person. You may have customers in the store who have health problems or are hyper allergic to such things.

You can ask just about anyone that works in a fire department and they’ve all been called out to businesses where workers have collapsed because they mix the wrong type of cleaning chemicals, or someone is having a respiratory issue or they have fainted because of the use of cleaning supplies. It is a very serious issue and when the fire department comes generally an ambulance will take someone away.

In case you didn’t know that will cost you a lot of money, not to mention it could cause a worker’s compensation lawsuit, or increased premiums which is something you don’t need right now.

I sure hope you will pay attention and train your workers properly as per the OSHA standards. Then I hope you will monitor your employees to make sure that they are following those directions, even when you aren’t watching. Please consider all this.

Lance Winslow is a retired franchisor – Lance Winslow’s Bio. Lance Winslow is formerly the CEO of WashGuys family of franchises for instance one of Lance Winslow’s favorite companies on the team; http://www.windowwashguys.com/links.shtml.