Hierarchy of Controls

Which hazard controls should you use? Which should you try first?

You shouldn’t just try any random hazard control, and you shouldn’t try them in just an order. Instead, there’s a logical progression to work through.

It’s important to work through a logical progression when you’re considering controls for a hazard. That logical progression, from first to last, is represented by the hierarchy of controls.

“You can’t eliminate every hazard, but the closer you can get to the top, the closer you can reach that ideal and make people healthier and safer,” said Jonathan Bach, director of NIOSH’s.

NIOSH defines five rungs of the Hierarchy of Controls: elimination, substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls and personal protective equipment. The hierarchy is arranged beginning with the most effective controls and proceeds to the least effective. Although eliminating the hazard is the ultimate goal, it can be difficult and is not always possible.

Solution can be to use more than one control to control a hazard.

Many times, you’ll find you can’t completely control a hazard by using just one of the controls.

For example, you could use Substitution to remove a very hazardous chemical with a less hazardous chemical. But it may still be necessary to create Administrative Controls that limit the time a worker is near the chemical, and even then, it may still be necessary to provide the worker with personal protective equipment (PPE).

If you will put to many control measures the working process will be slowly and difficult, solution is to chose the most efficient controls as much as possible.