Canadian Occupational Safety

32 Canadian Occupational Safety www.cos-mag.com I n April 2012, a Thornhill, Ont., heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) company sent a supervisor and apprentice to repair an HVAC unit, located on the roof at the rear of a house. While the supervisor did other work, the apprentice was sent up to the roof to look at the unit. Shortly afterwards, the apprentice was found lying on the ground at the rear of the house. The worker suffered fatal injuries. An investigation by the Ontario Min- istry of Labour concluded the apprentice had fallen about 9 metres and was not wearing fall-arrest equipment. Workers who install and service HVAC equipment face all the haz- ards common to construction work — from lifting heavy materials to dangerous chemicals; from confined spaces to working at heights. Many of these hazards can lead to serious injuries or be fatal. HVAC technicians must go through a thorough training program, one that focuses on knowing how to identify these varied hazards and how to work safely around them. "It's a manual labour type of job, so they're working on job sites with all the hazards that go along with that," says Glenn Walsh, chief instruc- tor, refrigeration department, British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) in Burnaby, B.C., adding these hazards exist for HVAC workers on all kinds of projects. "It applies to someone working from a residential on up to commer- cial/industrial. The job sites will be different, but the hazards presented to the employee can be just as hazardous at a residential work site as at a com- mercial one." WIDE RANGE OF HAZARDS The main hazards of HVAC work include: lifting, confined space entry (working inside ductwork), electro- cution from electricity and wiring and using ladders and scaffolding. Workers are often required to work at height (on roofs, for instance) and have to manage fall-arrest systems. They deal with hot work as well as gases and chemicals, such as refrig- erants, cleaning liquids, solvents, pressurized cylinders filled with chemicals and gases that can cause burns. They often work long hours and also drive between jobs, risking injury in a collision. Other adverse health effects can be caused by the prolonged forward bending of the back, often required to install heating and air conditioning duct hangers and ductwork. Working in a stooped posture over a long period of time can result in low-back muscle strain, ligament sprain, a bulging or herniated disc or other back prob- lems. HVAC technicians who work in older buildings may also be exposed to asbestos, which can cause mesothe- lioma, a rare but often fatal illness that can take a long time to develop and can be difficult to diagnose. Some of the most common types of injuries that HVAC workers sustain are eye injuries and exposure to chemi- cals, Walsh says. "In terms of physical safety, their eyes, ears, feet, back and lungs are all exposed to dangers." Ken Strohan, who has been in the HVAC industry for 15 years, says a dangerous situation can arise with the use of tools such as torches, especially in confined spaces. "There must be at least two people on site when someone is in a con- fined space. And when a worker starts brazing, they are using up oxygen. If there are two or three people in a confined space, the oxygen levels can deplete quickly and you can become disoriented very quickly. That's where confined spaces and working with combustibles become an issue." Another very common hazard for HVAC workers is working at height, he adds. For example, when workers are doing a furnace change-over, they often have to go onto the customer's roof and change the chimney venting. Bad weather conditions, snow-cov- ered roofs, for example, increase the risk of falling. As well, many roofs do not have tie-off points, which workers use for lanyards and harnesses. In Sas- katchewan, for example, only newly constructed homes (those built after 1960) are required to have them. A safe alternative is to use a crane or bucket and lift. However, that can cost anywhere from $250 to $500, and many customers won't pay for that. "Sometimes, I tell customers, 'I have to get a lift here; I'm not sending my guys up there.' You may have to walk away from a job if they're not willing to pay for the workers to be safe and do it properly," says Strohan, estimator and project co-ordinator at Saskatoon-based Razor Heating and Air Conditioning. As well as causing strain injuries to the back, the constant need to lift and carry heavy items can also cause falls. HVAC technicians work with very heavy items, such as showers, sinks and toilets. The tool bag itself may weigh 40 to 50 pounds. "It's January 13 in Saskatchewan, it's 2 degrees, your boots are full of snow, and you're in a new construc- tion zone. You walk in there with your tools in your hand and when you step onto the muddy steps, your heel comes out and down you go — 15 steps with 40 pounds of tools in your hand. So there's a risk just in walking on a construction site that isn't pre- pared correctly," Strohan says. While most of the day-to-day refrigerants workers deal with are classified by the manufacturers as safe in terms of toxicity and flammability, the chemical toxicity of some refrigerants does pose a hazard, says Lee Blakely, instructor and program head, refrigeration and air conditioning in the School of Construction at the Saskatchewan Polytechnic in Saskatoon. Moreover, heating these chemicals — which happens during a service procedure, such as brazing — increases their toxicity and makes them more hazardous to breathe. "If we do have to have a service procedure, where we're going to use a brazing process, we mitigate risk by Dangerous ducts HVAC workers keep us cool in the summer and warm in the winter, but doing so can put them at risk By Linda Johnson

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