Are there non-health-related hazards associated with corrosives?

When working on improving safety in the workplace, you must evaluate whether your facility uses corrosives for anything in the area. If so, you need to make sure that you have proper safety measures associated with them. This is mainly because they can cause such serious health problems to anyone exposed to them, and those health problems can occur instantly upon exposure. What many people overlook, however, is that there are other non-health-related hazards associated with corrosives as well.

For example, corrosives do not simply destroy tissues, but they can destroy many other materials as well. If a corrosive chemical comes in contact with structural components of a machine, or even the building itself, it could cause them to weaken and break. This, of course, can lead to a dangerous failure of anything that the corrosive substance came into contact with.

Corrosives can also have a serious impact on the surrounding environment. If a corrosive is not disposed of properly and it ends up in the soil, water, or other environmental areas, it can quickly kill the wildlife and poison the water supply. If it soaks into the water table, this can have an impact for miles around. Of course, the extent of this hazard would depend on what corrosive substance or material it was, and how much of it entered the area.

While corrosives are often needed for important tasks in work facilities, it is critically important that they are stored, used, and disposed of in the proper way to minimize any type of hazard. Make sure corrosive material management is a key part of your overall workplace safety efforts.