New safeguards for dockers

As an IMO correspondence group works to recommend changes to the organisation’s Resolution on the subject of enclosed spaces on board ship, it is perhaps worth recapping what this subject means to cargo handlers and other shoreside employees concerned with cargo.

Dockworkers and others such as surveyors occasionally have need to go into a hold or even just the access to a hold in which bulk cargoes are present or have recently been present and where the hatches are still on.

Regrettably, this has resulted in the loss of a number of lives due to the lack of awareness of the dangers it can present and the lack of safe systems of work to ensure personnel safety. The dangers have been highlighted many times by IMO and other publications on solid bulk cargoes, by individual shipping companies, enforcement agencies, ICHCA International and this column Ð but they still occur.

There are several dangers, all arising from contamination of the atmosphere present in the space. One of the main concerns is reduction in the volume of oxygen present. The normal atmosphere that we breathe consists of 21% oxygen and 79% nitrogen and that permits human beings to live. As the oxygen content decreases, so does the ability to live and at 16% and below it is no longer possible. This is despite the remainder of the atmosphere being entirely inert and harmless. The fact is that, unhappily, certain cargoes or even processes can absorb oxygen and bring about this situation and, unless a meter reading is taken, the danger will not be appreciated. One dockworker collapsed at the foot of an access way leading to a hold, as did the two who went to rescue him. All three died as the oxygen percentage was afterwards calculated to be in the order of 11%. The cargo was copra and it had affected not only the hold but also the access way.

A hold full of rusting scrap metal with the hatches on overnight had the same effect next morning when a surveyor went to inspect the cargo.

Equally, some cargoes can emit vapours or gases that have properties that can render the atmosphere dangerous or harmful. There is a need for all concerned to be aware of this hazard and for safe systems of work to be devised and all those involved to be trained in them to stop these entirely preventable and tragic accidents continuing to occur.

Similarly, it is also a fact that freight containers are enclosed spaces and care should be taken before entering them as well Ð especially if they have or may have been moving under fumigation. A movement under fumigation is a dangerous goods class 9 movement with its own UN Number 3359. The door end should have a fumigation sign as prescribed by the IMDG Code attached with details as to when it was fumigated.

However, absence of the sign should not be taken that the inside of the container is free of contaminants. Precautions should always be taken before anybody enters.

It is, therefore, appropriate that the TT Club and ICHCA International have combined to revise and reprint an earlier pocket card on the former and a new card on the latter and both are now freely available from either of those organisations.

On a completely different matter, by the time that this edition is being read, it is likely that IMOÕs Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) at its 87th meeting in May will have reached a momentous decision. At least it will be momentous for the thousands of dockworkers who lash and unlash container ships and the thousands of seamen who have to check lashings at sea, tighten them and possibly add to them in view of bad weather ahead.

The reason for this is that MSC at its 80th meeting in May 2005 decided that a set of guidelines on the safe lashing of deck containers should be prepared and asked its Dangerous Goods, Solid Cargoes and Containers Sub Committee (DSC) to carry out the work. DSC/14 completed that work last September and remitted the outcome to MSC/87 for approval and subsequent publishing. The intention is that it will form a new Annex 14 to the IMO’s Cargo Stowage and Securing Code (CSS Code).

As requested by MSC, the proposed new Annex 14 addresses new ships and they are defined as those where the keel is laid on or after 1 January 2015. For new ships, the Annex requires that the ship design takes into consideration the need for safe access to every deck lashing position, the need for such positions to be safe and lit and that the lashing equipment be ergonomically sound. It also specifies a preferred and minimum width of those lashing positions and there are similar requirements for lashing bridges.

In addition, lashing activity requiring work on the top of container stows is dealt with. All this has been harmonised with the ILO’s 2005 edition of its Code of Practice on Safety and Health in Ports in which similar minimum sizes were quoted.

The proposed new Annex also states that certain of its provisions should be applied to existing ships whilst other aspects should be considered as far as practicable. It is accepted that some changes cannot be expected on existing ships eg widening of lashing bridges but it is also accepted that where no safe access and/or safe lashing position is provided, the Annex should be fully applied.

When published expected in the next few months it will be for each terminal and its employees and its shipping company customers to consider each existing ship and determine whether any changes need to be made.

This is momentous because the lashing/unlashing activity on purpose built container ships is the work in which the majority of shipboard injuries to stevedores occur and it is the first time that an international standard has been developed.

Many ships are properly provided for in this regard, but, equally, many are not. There have been stories and even photographs of dockers or seamen standing on the tops of fencing or on the small pedestal top in order to complete lashing requirements. It has also been said that where a stevedore employer has said that his employees are not going to carry out lashing work in a specific place because it is too dangerous, the crew are called out to do it instead.

With all of this in mind, it is to be hoped that this work will result in a wholesale improvement. This column can only applaud all those who worked long and hard to achieve the finality of the DSC work and hope that it will soon be translated into improvements where they are needed.