Compressed air in compliance with ARBO legislation

The Risk - Inventory &- Evaluation (RI&E) has been mandatory since 1994. With the RI&E, you check work environments for possible safety risks. The risks found must be included in the Plan of Action (PVA) to ensure that unsafe conditions found are also addressed and resolved as soon as possible. This is the sequence of action you must follow according to the Working Conditions Act (in Netherlands: ARBO). It is your legal duty to comply with it and you cannot evade it by claiming that you were not aware of it.

Personal liability

The Health and Safety Act defines in very general terms what you have to comply with to create a safe working situation. The decree uses open descriptions and never specifies how you must solve a situation and not at all with what kind of products, but rather that you must do it. The responsibility for implementation lies with employee as well as employer.

As far as the legislator is concerned, if you are free to assess and implement safety as you see fit, the question will always remain: "What does the best solution look like?" Here, the legislator likes to refer to "the state of the art". You may use any solution, as long as it is good. Basically, the assumption of the labour inspectorate that does assessment of accidents, or unsafe situations, is that the state-of-the-art corresponds to the applicable technical (ISO) standards of the products related to the situation. 

In any case, when using ISO standardised products, you may rely on the fact that you have brought in state-of-the-art technology. You may also use other solutions that do not conform to the standard, but then you have to prove yourself that this is a workable solution. That will not be easy if the labour inspectorate comes to assess an accident. Remember that personal liability applies in case of negligence.

So use products as defined in the ISO standards to achieve the required level of safety as required of you by law.

Requirements from the ARBO

What does the Dutch ARBO law require from you with regard to compressed air safety?

It mainly revolves around Article 3.17 of the ARBO decree: "Prevention of danger of being struck by objects, products, liquids or gases." The danger of being struck or hit by objects, products or parts thereof or liquids or gases, or the danger of being trapped between objects, products or parts thereof, shall be prevented and, if that is not possible, limited as much as possible.

In relation to your compressed air system, we can distinguish two possible risks here:

• Danger from snaking hoses and couplings due to hose breakage
• Danger from snaking hoses and couplings due to loose couplings