What makes a confined space and why confined spaces kill

Every year workers die in tanks, silos, sewers, manholes, pits, vaults, vessels and bins. Many of them were doing ordinary jobs: cleaning out a tank, checking a valve in a vault, freeing grain that had bridged in a bin, repairing a pump at the bottom of a wet well. Many of the others were coworkers who saw someone collapse and went in to help. Confined space incidents are notorious for killing more than one person at a time, and for killing people who had no intention of entering a hazardous place at all.

This course is about recognizing confined spaces and understanding how their hazards are controlled. It explains what makes a space confined, why the air inside can kill without warning, how gas testing, ventilation, isolation and permits work, who does what during an entry, and why rescue must be planned before anyone goes in. It covers the general principles and how the law and standards apply them in your country.

It is an awareness course. It will help you recognize confined spaces, understand the signs and labels you see at work and take part in your employer's program. It does not qualify you to enter a confined space, to act as an attendant or entry supervisor, to test the atmosphere or to perform a rescue. Each of those roles requires training by your employer on the specific spaces, equipment and procedures at your site, and some require hands-on certification.

What is a confined space?

The details vary between jurisdictions, but almost every definition of a confined space combines three ideas:

• the space is large enough and configured so that a person can bodily enter it and do work;
• it has limited or restricted means of entry or exit, such as a manhole, a hatch, a ladder, a narrow passage or a long crawl;
• it is not designed for continuous human occupancy. People go in to inspect, clean, repair or maintain it, not to work there all day.

OSHA's general industry standard, 29 CFR 1910.146, uses exactly these three ideas: a confined space is large enough and configured so that an employee can bodily enter and perform assigned work, has limited or restricted means of entry or exit, and is not designed for continuous employee occupancy. OSHA then defines a smaller group, permit-required confined spaces, which also have one or more serious hazards: a hazardous or potentially hazardous atmosphere, material that could engulf an entrant, an internal configuration that could trap or asphyxiate an entrant, or any other recognized serious safety or health hazard. Lesson 2 explains the standard and its construction counterpart, Subpart AA.

Look at what the definitions do not say. A confined space does not have to be small, dark, deep or underground. A large storage tank, a ship's hold, a boiler, a railcar, an attic crawlspace or a long duct can all be confined spaces. Nor does a space have to be completely enclosed. An open-topped pit, a trench-like vault or a degreasing tank can trap heavy gases and meet the definition. The test is about access, design and hazards, not size.

Examples by industry

Confined spaces appear in almost every sector. Some common examples:

Some places are obvious. Others are easy to overlook: the pit under a vehicle hoist, the inside of a large duct, a sump at the bottom of a building, a vault where electrical cables enter a data center, or a room that is normally ventilated but becomes a confined space when its fans are shut down for maintenance. Lesson 3 explains how workplaces identify and inventory their confined spaces so that none are missed.

Why confined spaces are so dangerous

Confined spaces combine several features that make ordinary hazards deadly:

• the air can be wrong, and you cannot tell by looking or smelling. Oxygen can be displaced or consumed; toxic gases can build up; flammable vapors can collect. Some of the most dangerous gases, such as nitrogen and methane, have no smell at all, and hydrogen sulfide deadens the sense of smell at high concentrations;
• the shape of the space limits ventilation, so contaminants do not disperse and fresh air does not come in on its own;
• the limited entry and exit make escape slow and rescue difficult. A worker who is dizzy or unconscious cannot climb a ladder or squeeze through a manhole;
• materials stored in the space, such as grain, sand, sludge or liquids, can flow, collapse and bury a worker in seconds;
• equipment inside the space, such as agitators, augers, conveyors and mixers, can start unexpectedly, and lines feeding the space can release steam, chemicals or water;
• the work itself can create the hazard: welding uses up oxygen and produces fumes, solvents release vapors, and cleaning sludge can release hydrogen sulfide trapped in it.

The common thread is that the hazard may not be present when the worker enters, may not be detectable without instruments, and may disable the worker before they can get out. That is why confined space entry relies on testing, ventilation, isolation, continuous monitoring, an attendant outside the space and a rescue plan, rather than on the worker's own judgment once inside.

The scale of the problem

The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 1,030 worker deaths in confined spaces in the United States from 2011 to 2018, an average of about 129 a year, ranging from 88 in 2012 to 166 in 2017. The leading events were trench collapses (168 deaths), falls to a lower level (156), inhalation of harmful substances (126, most often hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide and methane), engulfment in collapsing material (98, two thirds of them in grain), fires and explosions (58) and oxygen depletion (39). Lesson 11 describes several public cases.

A frequently cited finding comes from investigations by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in the United States in the 1980s: about 60 percent of the people who died in confined space incidents it studied were would-be rescuers. The exact share varies between studies and periods, and the figure is decades old, but the lesson has not changed. When someone collapses in a confined space, the instinct to go in after them kills people. Most rescuers who enter without breathing apparatus are overcome by the same atmosphere that disabled the first worker.

The same NIOSH investigations found other telling patterns. In most incidents a supervisor was present or had authorized the entry. Few of the spaces had been tested before entry, few had been ventilated, and very few of the employers had a rescue plan. Written procedures sometimes existed but were not used. In other words, many of the deaths happened at workplaces that knew the space was a concern but did not follow the controls.

Why people go in

Confined space deaths rarely involve reckless behavior. More often they involve ordinary assumptions:

• the space was entered many times before without a problem;
• the job was expected to take only a few minutes;
• the worker could see the bottom and it looked clean and dry;
• there was no smell, or the smell was familiar;
• the space had been tested earlier in the day, before conditions changed;
• the gas detector was in the truck, or its battery was dead;
• a coworker collapsed and someone had to do something.

Each of these feels reasonable at the moment. The controls in this course exist to make safety independent of those moments, so that no one has to rely on a hunch about whether the air is safe.

The basic approach

Confined space programs in both Canada and the United States follow the same basic logic:

• identify every confined space at the workplace and warn people about it;
• avoid entry where possible, by doing the work from outside or by redesigning the space;
• where entry is necessary, have a competent person assess the hazards and write a plan or procedure;
• isolate the space from energy and materials, clean and ventilate it, and test the atmosphere;
• issue an entry permit that records the hazards, controls, tests and people involved;
• keep an attendant outside the space for the whole entry, with continuous communication;
• have a rescue plan, equipment and trained rescuers ready before anyone enters;
• train everyone involved, and review the program regularly.

The rest of the course follows this sequence. Lesson 3 covers identifying and classifying spaces, lessons 4 to 6 cover the atmosphere and gas testing, lesson 7 covers physical hazards and isolation, lesson 8 covers ventilation, lesson 9 covers permits and roles, lesson 10 covers rescue, lesson 11 looks at real incidents and lesson 12 brings it together in an entry plan.

Related courses

Several topics connect closely to confined space work. Isolating machinery and energy sources before entry is covered in detail in HSE-210 Lockout and Hazardous Energy Control. Respiratory protection and other personal protective equipment are introduced in HSE-104. Fire hazards and hot work are covered in HSE-105 and HSE-216. Fall protection for vertical entries is covered in HSE-212. This course points to those courses rather than repeating them.