Managing Dangerous Goods Work Health and Safety Risks and Regulatory Compliance

IHEA Lunch + Learn Online Session - Weds May 14, 2025

Join us for an essential session on managing dangerous goods and chemical risks within the workplace, with a focus on regulatory compliance and best practices. While many chemicals in workplaces are safely handled, certain environments—such as hospitals—present unique challenges due to patients' limited mobility and the complexity of evacuations in emergency situations.

This event will cover the crucial steps for managing chemical risks, including safe transportation, storage, and handling within your facility. Learn how to understand the hazards of chemicals in your workplace and how to store them in compliance with Australian Standards and WHS regulations.

Our expert speakers will guide you through the key aspects of ensuring chemical safety in your workplace, protecting both people and the environment while meeting regulatory requirements.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to enhance your knowledge and improve safety practices in your facility.

Register Now

Within the workplace many chemicals are harmless as they tend to be retail packages and pose reduced risk to human health. However, in other settings, the risks of chemicals sometimes are not considered due to the nature of the facility. If not managed appropriately, the resulting outcomes can be catastrophic, resulting in fires, chemical exposure, harm to health and the environment, and damage to property.

Within hospitals, appropriate management of chemical risk is of the utmost importance due to patients being bedridden and having their health impaired or having limited mobility, which results in difficult evacuations if an incident was to occur.

Therefore the management of chemicals, including appropriate transportation within the building and on hospital grounds, including the safe storage of within the facility means that understanding the risks and hazards of the chemicals being stored and used is paramount to the safe storage of chemicals.

However, in understanding the chemical risks, a fundamental understanding in the applicable Australian Standards to store those chemicals ensures that the storage is in line with Australian best practice meeting the requirements under WHS Regulations where appropriate dangerous goods management is required.

Under the WHS Regulations, the following needs to be considered when storing and handling chemicals:

Is there a risk of:

• Flammable atmospheres of reaching 5% in air.

• Oxygen content falling to below 19.5% or going above 23.5%.

• Occupant exposure to elevated chemical concentrations.

• Are chemicals appropriately labelled and storage location placarded?

• Have chemical incompatibilities been considered?

• Is a chemical list, detailing chemical class, packing group, etc., available?

• Are Safety Data Sheets for all our chemicals readily available and up to date?

• Is a chemical manifest required for regulatory requirements, when do we inform the Regulator?

• Are chemical within the building appropriately stored?

• Is there a limit to the volumes that can be stored in certain locations.

• Where flammables are stored and used, has a Flammable Hazardous Zone Characterisation assessment been conducted to ensure correct understanding of flammable hazardous zones and that the installation of electrical items are appropriate

• Are bulk storages appropriate designed meeting the requirements of the applicable Australian Standards?

Our expert speaker on this topic will be Dr Paulo Da Silva, PhD, BSc (Hons), RACI, AIDGC.

Dr Paulo Da Silva, conducted his tertiary education at the University of New South Wales, graduating with a Bachelor of Science, with Honours degree in 1999. During Dr Da Silva’s undergraduate education, he conducted 2 small Summer Scholarships during the summers of 1997/1998 and 1998/1999.

Following completion of his Post Doctoral studies, he conducted another summer scholarship at CSIRO for 4 months before joining the School of Chemistry at the University of Sydney as an Associate Lecturer (Apr 2004-Mar2005), and then returning to the University of New South Wales as a Research Assistant (Mar 2005-Mar 2006). Following this, Dr Da Silva continued at the University of New South Wales as an Associate Lecturer (Mar 2006-Jun 2009) before joining CETEC as a field consultant in June 2009.

Given Dr Da Silva’s passion of working with chemicals, he joined CETEC’s Dangerous Goods team in Sep 2013 honing his skills in chemical risk analysis, reviewing and auditing of laboratories, chemical stores and other storages against applicable Australian Standards to ensure compliance to applicable Standards.

Register below to hear Dr Da Silva's expertise and technical knowledge at the next IHEA Lunch + Learn session.

Register Now