Eyewash Stations: What Plants Need to Know

Eyewash fountains are somewhat like fire extinguishers: easy to overlook until they’re needed, at which point the stakes are enormous. For workers exposed to a corrosive chemical, properly installed and maintained fountains can mean the difference between full recovery and vision loss or even blindness.

Job-related eye injuries affect about 2,000 U.S. employees every day, with roughly a third of those needing emergency room treatment and at least 100 resulting in one or more days away from work, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

The lost time is significant for employers, coming on top of about $924 million in eye-related workers’ compensation claims, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the advocacy group Prevent Blindness.

Compliance with eye-safety standards imposed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, however, has the potential to curb all of those costs as well as avert thousands of dollars in fines if the agency discovers violations. Wash stations—from eyewash to eye and face wash fountains and drenching, full-body wash showers—are among a variety of eye-protection measures that OSHA requires employers to provide, including goggles that shield workers from flying debris and particles to lenses that filter out harmful wavelengths of light.

Read more: How to Pick the Right PPE: Outer Protective Gear

Nonetheless, “the percentage of facilities not complying with the rule is greater than those that are,” says Rick Kern, director of industrial sales at Bradley Corp., which manufactures eyewash stations and equipment and provides free assessments of what worksites need and how to set it up. “Some of it is willful, some of it is lack of knowledge and some of it is rolling the dice about an OSHA inspection.”

ANSI Details Wash Station Requirements

That gamble can be an expensive one: During the past year, the agency issued 223 citations totaling $891,532 for violations of its rule governing eyewash facilities and other first-aid services.

The regulation itself is succinct, mandating that employers provide “suitable facilities for quick drenching or flushing of the eyes and body” for immediate use by people in work areas with potential exposure to injurious or corrosive materials.

For determination of what facilities are suitable, the agency relies on American National Standards Institute provision Z358.1-2014.

Its specifications call for showers and eyewashes to be located within 10 seconds or 55 feet of the hazard and supply a safe flushing liquid such as potable water or buffered saline solution.

They must be able to provide a minimum water pressure of 30 pounds per square inch for at least 15 minutes at a “tepid” temperature of 60 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (15.6 to 37.8 degrees Celsius).

The ANSI guideline “does a good job of outlining what you should take into consideration when looking at eyewash scenarios,” Kern says.

It points to OSHA-mandated Safety Data Sheets (formerly known as Material Safety Data Sheets or MSDSs) for various substances that detail when safety equipment is required and what it should consist of: an eyewash fountain, eye and face wash equipment or a combination shower. “That’s what you use as a guide to determine where to place a product and what type,” Kern adds.