Amp Up Machinery Safety With ANSI B11

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Machinery safety is an issue faced by most OSH professionals at some point during their careers. The ANSI B11 standards are one of the most widely recognized and implemented series of voluntary national consensus standards today, and many of the standards are recognized by governmental agencies at the local, state, national and global level.

ASSE recently published a tech brief that is a guide to all of the ANSI B11 standards. It includes titles, versions by year, and their applicable scope statements. Any safety professional working with machinery safety hazards and exposures should find this material valuable.

In addition, ANSI B11.0 was recently revised, and ASSE is working with the B11 Committee to raise awareness, use and implementation of this critical safety standard. ASSE has posted some information about the scope of this standard. Of particular interest are the methodology for achieving safety in the design and the use of machinery, explanation of procedures to identify hazards and estimate/evaluate risks during relevant phases of the machine life cycle, and guidance for hazard elimination and risk reduction.