Join HSI Chief Safety Officer Jill James as she visits environmental health and safety professionals in their workplaces to explore important workplace safety topics. This video identifies different types of compressed gas cylinders, how to properly secure them, and how to store them when they are not in use.

Video Transcript:

My name is Jill, Chief Safety Officer with HSI. I'm a former OSHA inspector here to help you identify and correct workplace safety hazards.

Compressed gas cylinders are very common to find in almost all work environments, whether it's in a manufacturing facility or at the local pizza parlor where someone's filling helium balloons.

Now whether they're filled with fuel gas or oxygen or an inert gas the hazards are all the same with them: they're pressurized.

You want to be sure that they're secure so that they can't be tipped over turning into a projectile in your work environment. One of the ways to protect them is to ensure that they're chained together like we see here so that we don't accidentally shear off the valve body and it becomes a projectile when cylinders aren't in use, some employers put them in a pen if you will for them to live. Now when you're going to store them make sure that you've removed the regulator itself and put a cover over the top so that we don't risk sharing this assembly off, you want to keep them upright and away from traffic and far away from exits and you don't want them stored near flammable materials either.

Remember, never store oxygen and fuel gas cylinders next to one another. In fact there's a requirement that they be separated by at least 20 feet or by a fire rated partition. The exception to that is acetylene and it took and oxygen torch sets they can be stored next to one another.

Remember when you're doing your inspections to check out your regulator covers. You want to make sure that there aren't any cracks or breaks in the regulator cover itself, the reason that's important is because we don't want to have any dirt or oil or grease get into the regulator itself which can cause an explosion later.

Now compressed gas cylinder safety isn't rocket science but there is a science to it, in fact there are a few more requirements and if you'd like to learn more you can certainly ask us about that.

I hope you gained a safety skill today. If you know someone who needs this go ahead and pass it on.

Safety is everyone's business.