Personal Injury Law

Iowa Workers' Compensation - PERC - Part X - Drycleaning Machinery Maintenance

By Steve Lombardi

Machine Maintenance - Real-time evaluation of drycleaning machine maintenance showed that exposures during maintenance were less than exposures during loading/unloading or transfer. Maintenance activities that were evaluated included cleaning the drycleaning machine's lint trap, button trap, and still; changing solvent filters; and disposing of hazardous waste. One reason for lower exposures from machine maintenance tasks than from loading/unloading was that the former occurred much less often than the latter.

Maintenance is an obvious important part of lower exposures for daily workers. Exposures for the maintenance person are also a concern. Knowing the size of the machine will tell you about the amount of PERC in the machine and the potential for exposure. Knowing what is being cleaned or maintained is equally important as is how the worker performs maintenance. Cleaning the button or lint trap may not have the exposure risks of cleaning out waste. Read the manuals and look at the machine. See how it operates and know how it is to be maintained. The age of the machine is important in terms of the safety engineered into it. Workers can be exposed to PERC during changing of clay/carbon solvent filters on a transfer machine. How the filters laden with spent solvent is equally important. Are they being treated like toxic waste or not? How are they being handled? What types of protective equipment is used? How long does it take to do the maintenance? Who does the maintenance and on what days of the week? Does it take place when the shop is otherwise shut down? Obviously there are too many questions for this blog but you get the idea.

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on February 11, 2008 (boomark / email).