Safety

This is a European mandate. I know very little about it, but if you perform a Web search you will find a great deal of information about it and sources of information that should directly address your questions. I just checked the Web, and you should find everything you need there.

Sorry that I cannot more directly address your questions.

Lanny Berke

I fully agree with the OSHA citation regarding the death of an employee at a Wal-Mart when the doors opened and a crowd was allowed to rush in looking for bargains.

We have the same situation in Minneapolis and the suburbs the day after Thanksgiving every year. The stores advertize huge bargains and people start lining up the evening before the store opens at 6:00 am.

Last Thanksgiving I was one of such a crowd. The electronics store where I was lined up to get a 52" TV set had a perfect system. The entrance was set up so people could only enter single file, and a set number (I believe it was 25) were allowed in at a time. The store had huge signs inside showing where each type of merchandise was located so that the instant each 25 got inside, they immediately went to the area that had what they were looking for. There were only a few seconds separating each group of 25, so the crowd, which totally circled the block, entered the store within approximately 10-15 minutes.

This store also was set up so that foreseeable events outside the store were addressed immediately. A group of 10-15 young adults had gathered near the entrance before the doors opened with the obvious intent of "bucking" the line. It was also obvious that those waiting in line, some for many hours, were not going to allow this to happen. Five minutes before the doors opened, a substantial number of very large security personnel approached this group and "offered" to escort them to the end of the line. Everything was handled very pleasantly and there were not any problems or even any harsh words.

If a company or store plans ahead for foreseeable events, and addresses these events properly, things can be handled safely and under perfect control.

Lanny R. Berke

OSHA requires that all employers whose employees can be reasonably expected to come into contact with body fluids must have a bloodborne pathogen safety program. Of course, anyone working in a health care facility would fit this requirement. First responders, emergency room staff, and police also fit this description. It is my opinion that simply having a first aid cabinet does not mean a company meets the "reasonably foreseeable" requirement.

I would recommend you contact your local OSHA office and ask this question. When contacting OSHA you are not required to give your name, phone number, or company name. If you are willing to give this information, request that the person you are talking to verify the conversation with a letter. They should be willing to do so.

If your hazard analysis has identified safety hazards that bother you, and you cannot design out or guard against the hazards that you have identified, then you are in a difficult position.
If you are trying to do a selling job to people who are not very technically sophisticated, you might want to consider making a model of the system and demonstrating the hazards that have you concerned. In the same vein, you may want to demonstrate how you are safeguarding people in the vicinity of the equipment you are replacing.
You have a difficult selling job in front of you, and I do not envy your position. If the concern these people have is to get around the OSHA regulations, you may want to get someone from the consulting arm of OSHA to attend a meeting at your site to explain the OSHA regulations addressing this area, and explain that they will be trading one set of OSHA regulations for another set of OSHA regulations. Remember, the people in the consulting arm of OSHA are not allowed to interact with the people in the enforcing arm of OSHA.

I can only talk about my knowledge and experience in the U.S.A. Also, I am talking from the viewpoint of an engineer, and from experience as an expert witness in product-liability lawsuits. For a more detailed and definitive answer to your "can I be sued" question, you should talk to a lawyer.
Here in the U.S., a designer working for a manufacturing company does not have to worry about being sued for a defective product, because they are working for an employer who controls their activities and there are many people involved in the design of the product.
Also, most employees do not have enough assets to make it worthwhile for an attorney to come after them.
I would highly recommend that all of your company's products undergo the scrutiny of a hazard-analysis study. Part of any well-planned hazard analysis looks at normal use, foreseeable misuse, who the users are, and the environment in which the product will foreseeably be used. Keep reading MACHINE DESIGN, because my column will be discussing hazard-analysis studies.