Overview
LEVEL 2 AWARD · CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT COSHH Awareness Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Correcting the confident, common beliefs that make COSHH the most misunderstood subject in health and safety. SIX MODULES · 20-QUESTION ASSESSMENT, 70% PASS MARK · …
Course Details
COSHH Awareness
Correcting the confident, common beliefs that make COSHH the most misunderstood subject in health and safety.
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Overview
COSHH has a reputation for being the dullest subject in health and safety, and that reputation is undeserved. It is the area where the gap between what people believe and what is actually true is widest — and where the consequences of that gap are measured in decades of disability. This course corrects specific, common, confident beliefs: that COSHH is only about drums with skulls on them, that a filed safety data sheet is a COSHH assessment, that a mask that has “always been fine” means it is working, and that a workplace exposure limit is safe to work up to.
This is generic training; your workplace is not. The definitive instruction for any specific task is your organisation’s COSHH assessment for that task, and the definitive information about any specific product is its current safety data sheet — where this course and either of those disagree, they win. If you find that your workplace has no assessment for a substance you use, or that the assessment describes a task nobody actually does, that is not a reason to improvise. It is a finding to report.
Who this course is for
Awareness-level training for the person doing the work, not the person carrying out the assessment.
Anyone whose work involves substances that arrive in containers — cleaning agents, paints, adhesives, solvents, fuels, disinfectants
Anyone whose work creates hazardous substances the process itself generates — welding fume, silica dust, wood dust, flour dust, diesel exhaust, soldering fume
Anyone required to use control measures such as local exhaust ventilation or respiratory protective equipment
Anyone due a scheduled refresher of their Level 2 COSHH awareness
Learning outcomes
Across the six modules, learners will be able to:
Define what COSHH covers, including substances the work process itself creates, and identify what falls outside it and under which other regulations.
Explain the legal duties under COSHH regulation 7, including why prevention takes priority and PPE is the last resort.
Read a CLP label and identify what the nine hazard pictograms indicate, and distinguish a safety data sheet from a COSHH assessment.
Recognise substances created by work processes that carry no label and appear on no inventory, and explain why they are consistently missed in assessments.
Name the four routes by which substances enter the body, and distinguish acute from chronic health effects and local from systemic effects.
Explain the difference between hazard and risk, and describe why a workplace exposure limit is a legal maximum rather than a safe target.
Apply the hierarchy of control in order, and explain why PPE — the control most commonly reached for first — sits at the bottom.
State the correct actions when local exhaust ventilation performance drops, and describe your own responsibilities for keeping it working.
Respond correctly to a spill or an exposure, and know when a symptom or a disease must be reported under RIDDOR.
List your own duties under COSHH, including reporting defects and symptoms early and attending health surveillance honestly.
Career path
This course is deliberately pitched at awareness level — the person doing the work, not the person deciding how it should be controlled. A COSHH assessment must be carried out by a competent person: someone with the knowledge, training and experience to understand both the risks and the controls, which is not automatically the manager, and not automatically whoever has time. Becoming that competent person is a distinct step beyond this award, requiring further training and experience this course does not itself provide.
Course structure
What COSHH Is
Recognising Substances
How Substances Harm
COSHH Assessment
Control Measures
Monitoring and Duties
Each module closes with a self-check. The course also includes five practice scenarios and a 20-question end-of-course assessment (pass mark 70%) with a full answer key and rationale.
Frequently asked questions
Q. Is a filed safety data sheet the same as a COSHH assessment?
No. An SDS describes the substance in general, written by a manufacturer with no knowledge of your workplace. The assessment must address your specific task, quantity, ventilation and people.
Q. Is it safe to work right up to a workplace exposure limit?
No. A WEL is a legal maximum, not a target. Exposure must be reduced as far below it as reasonably practicable, and many substances have no WEL at all.
Q. Who decides how a task should be controlled — does this course?
No. A COSHH assessment must be carried out by a competent person, with the knowledge, training and experience to understand both the risks and the controls. This award does not make you that person.
Q. What should I do if my workplace has no assessment for a substance I use?
Report it. That is not a reason to improvise — it is one of the most useful things a newly trained person can do.
Q. Does this course override my organisation’s own COSHH assessment or a product’s safety data sheet?
No. This is generic training; your workplace is not. Where this course and either of those disagree, they take precedence.
Q. Does a mask that has “always been fine” mean it’s working properly?
Not necessarily. Tight-fitting RPE requires face fit testing, and facial hair breaks the seal — a leaking mask can feel completely normal to wear while providing very little protection.
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Course Features
- Lectures 8
- Quizzes 2
- Duration Lifetime access
- Skill level All levels
- Language English
- Students 2
- Certificate Yes
- Assessments Self
