Occupational Health & Safety: "I need a mask," said Jim Oswald, the newest employee at the Hightower Chemical Company.
"They're in the cabinet with the other PPE," replied Oscar Cohen, supervisor of the organic mixing section.
"The what cabinet?"
"PPE. You know, the protective equipment," said Oscar.
8 comments:
This goes along with my comments from earlier articles about safety. There definitely seems to be theme about it today, at least with the articles I've read. It was also interesting to learn the actual meaning of the abbreviation for N95. The reason I was curious is because we have in stock for our PPE in EMS as well in the event there is a major airborne pathogen (yay Medical terms), such as swine flu/H1N1. This also brings me back to our shop policies and reminds me why we need PPE, even if don't enjoy it sometimes.
I have my own 3M respirator that I was fit for by a previous employer I try to use as often as possible, as opposed to the disposal masks. The problem with this is that filters don't keep forever, so if I do an hour of work with new filters and then don't need them again for a few months chances are they're no good, and unfortunately our shop doesn't stock them because we don't fit students with respirators. Which I suppose is understandable, the cost of fitting every student with a respirator would be astronomical.
I suppose there are plenty of hypothetical Jims out in the world, trying to stay safe on the job, but lacking the proper PPE training. I suppose the takeaway is that each company should provide the necessary safety training for whatever their employees are working with.
Sometimes it seems like OSHA regulations come across as out of touch or heavy handed, but I guess they really are for the best. Although some are really silly, like the rule against power strip daisy chaining, some regulations are quite valuable. In my opinion, if OSHA prevents just a couple on-site injuries or deaths, then all their bureaucratic nonsense is worthwhile.
An old but very effective saying when it comes to PPE is that no one is going to care about your safety more then you will. Yes your employer is responsible for providing you with the opportunity to be safe with the gear but it is the employee's final responsibility to make sure that they (you) are being safe. In regards though to the respiratory protection.... "DUST MASK" protects you from DUST...... If you don't know what your PPE Does you shouldn't be doing something that requires it in the first place. I have my own 3M respirator that I got from an employer who did not actually fit me for it so technically that company is violating OSHA Standards by not ensuring that the equipment is properly fitted. With my EMT training though I have been trained to fit several types of respiratory PPE.
Was this a made up story to prove this point? Because it really read like an example in a safety textbook. But I guess it does not really matter because it was pretty effective in getting the point across. Although the title of the article was entirely misleading. I thought it was going to try to sell some fancy mask versus a normal one and say why this fancy version they had was so much better. But having an awareness article about knowing what the right type of safety equipment to use is, is even more helpful. But I don't think this helps the general working public as much as it does owners of companies who need to make sure everyone that works for they gets training and that they do everything they can to illuminate hazards in their company. Although, if workers read this they might be inspired to take up a safety-improvement conversation with their boss. I am a big believer that you should not be working on a project if you do not know the proper safety measures to take, which is why I am so glad that CMU puts such an emphasis on it.
This article was a very cheesy way to introduce people into some very important concept. It is crucial that everyone knows proper safety techniques when working in any shop. Its kinda funny how I'm just now figuring out what N95 stands for when I've been using them for so long. I find that Carnegie Mellon University has been excellent at enforcing proper safety precautions so far. However, there's always room for improvement when it comes to education in regards to safety.
This is awesome. I want lengthy technical OSHA safety regulations to be explained in stories like this all the time. A little heavy-handed, but entertaining.
This article shows just how important proper knowledge of PPE's and safety training are (which is good since that's obviously its purpose). I find it appalling that there are so many people with whom I've worked with who claim to not care about safety, and I'm glad to see that Jim is taking it seriously. Go Jim!
I have just recently started taking the 30-hour OSHA course and this article explains a good chunk of regulations and considerations in a short, entertaining fashion. I have only begun to cover what was in this article, but it is important to know. I am glad that they are moving the course up as information covered in the course is important as we get jobs, but also as we work at CMU. Joe brings up a good point that we don't stock respirators in the scene shop, probably due to costs and its not required as we are students (right?). I think it would be nice if at the beginning of each year there was an opportunity so that students could be fitted and choose to purchase a respirator if they wanted or replenish cartridges. Or build it into a day of scene shop safety in stagecraft.
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