Focus on safety continues to bring success

  • Published
  • By Brad Hicks
  • AEDC/PA
The Arnold Air Force Base, NFAC and Tunnel 9 Safety Condition Campaign has thus far proven to be a success, as more than half of the items identified since the beginning of 2017 have been permanently addressed.

According to Safety, Health & Environmental Manager Richard Nugent, more than 800 issues have been identified to-date, all of which have been at least temporarily addressed and some conditions have been permanently addressed.

“Our Safety Condition Campaign, started in January, has been a great success,” Nugent said. “Our employees have been engaged in finding and fixing hazards, which improves safety for all of our fellow employees. Through October, we have identified over 850 conditions, 450 of which have been permanently fixed. The remaining items have temporary mitigations in place and NAS is actively seeking funding to permanently address.

“All NAS employees are to be congratulated for this effort.”

The purpose of the Safety Condition Campaign is to identify conditions that make compliance with safety requirements a challenge, to ensure NAS is in compliance with the Air Force safety standards, and to establish consistency across work locations. The campaign has focused on a different area of safety each month. Focus areas have included lock out/tag out, barricades and signs, lifting and rigging, confined space entry, and elevated work platforms.

The focus area for October was hazardous chemicals. Nugent said 23 items were identified during the month. Examples of these items include missing labels, improper storage and missing Safety Data Sheets. Of the items identified, 14 have been permanently addressed, with the remaining nine in progress.

For November, the focus area was explosive materials. As described in the Safety, Health and Environmental (SHE) Standard on Explosives Safety, an explosive material is capable of releasing mechanical, chemical or nuclear energy in a sudden and often violent manner that results in the release of high pressures and temperatures.

Explosives is defined in the SHE as ammunitions, munitions fillers, demolition material, solid rocket motors, liquid propellants, cartridges, pyrotechnics, mines, bombs, grenades, warheads of all types, explosives elements of ejection and aircrew egress systems, air-launched missiles and those explosive components of missile systems and space systems, and assembled kits and devices containing explosives material.

The term explosives also refers to the fillers of an explosive item. Fillers may be explosive mixtures, propellants, pyrotechnics, and other toxic substances. This term does not include liquid fuels and oxidizers that are not used with missiles, rockets, and other such weapons or explosive item. Explosives weight, net weight, and other like terms also include fillers.

Improper handling of explosive components may not only result in malfunctioning and loss of test data/time, but may cause mishaps that could result in injury, loss of life and/or damage to property.

The focus area for December is defeating safety devices. Information on the topics of focus during the Safety Condition Campaign may be found on the AEDC Team Site via the AEDC Safety Site link.