Just doing a little thinking about the paver thread and what the crew's were wearing for PPE So what do you guy's wear for PPE when out on a job? I know you probably don't wear a hard hat while in your machine, but what about when you get out? How about work boots with the steel toe? or the orange vest when working near traffic? On edit...As I stated in the paver thread, I worked briefly with a company last summer and the crew never wore any PPE....I did though.
I usually wear the hard hat all day if im in or out, I don't even notice it anymore. Company bought us bright orange saftey jackets for in the winter, and in the summer we have the normal vests. I dont like the vests so i bought some safety tshirts. No steel toes here never liked them they get cold and seem to wear out the boots faster.
I believe its law in NB the saftey vest be tear away if I remember right,Irving is making it manditory to wear the new lime green saftey vests. Boots,vest and a hard hat outside the machine as long as its not white lol
I never liked steel toe boots either. They get cold, the boots are heavier, and if you drop something seriously heavy on them instead of crushing your toes the steel can fold over and cut your toes right off. My uncle had a similar experience when working in a warehouse. A guy on a forktruck came flying out of a doorway as my uncle was right around the corner on the other side. You guessed it, forklift went right over his foot. He's made a full recovery since then, but the doctor said if he had been wearing steel toe boots his toes would have been cut off without a doubt. As for hard hats, we really only wear them when working for large commercial jobs. We were working for a company who was contracted by Verizon Wireless this summer. No BS here, we had hard hats on all the time. For our residential excavation jobs, there really isn't a need. Usually most of our jobs have only 1 machine running on the site at a time, not too much of a concern.
ppe we have to wear long sleeved green reflective jacket, proban long sleeved tee shirt,proban trousers ,steel toecaps,hard hat around excavator s, grab lorry,deep excavations etc. goggles ,ear muffs , and gel gloves when needed ,wrong clothes =no job
Steel Cap boots only, safety glasses and Hi-Vis shirt all minimum for my sites. We really should be wearing hard hats...and I think it wont be long before we are. I had a young labourer come for a couple of days casual from an agency. He had steel caps on the first two days...on the third he wore sandshoes and I didn't notice....it was then he ran over his own foot with the vertical rammer ...don't ask me how but his foot was black for a week...nothing broken thank goodness. I didn't know wether to kill him or console him....Anyway, at least he told the truth to the agency that he'd been given a site safety brief and told of the minimum PPE. Sunburn is a very real issue for us. I supply two big pump packs of sunscreen which are always in the truck...along with two first aid kits...which I seem to need on those Fridays when Digger has been sticking the Squizzy Voodoo doll I try and convince my guys to wear long sleeves for the added sun protection but they think its too hot. I only ever wear long sleeves and after 3 hot days over 100 on a recent job I'm the only one still standing....young whippersnappers Seriously though...heat exhaustion/sunstroke are something I have to watch carefully.
what i've seen is on road jobs weather it be digging or paving, boots and refective vest or shirt is a given. as for hard hats most of the time no one say any thing unless its a federal funded job(like working the navy base in the area). as for summer time heat, example last summer we had four days were it was in the 90s and the humidity was very high , we didn't pave it was just to hot combined with the heat from the asphalt. most of the time in the summer we wear boots long pants and at least a tank top( but lots of sun screen).remember the asphalt is around 350 degrees when it loaded on the truck and in the summer time it doesn't cool off to much before it gets to the job. lots of times on road jobs the inspector as one of those heat reading guns and if the mix is cooler than (i think) 180 ish degrees they will not take the load. any way i'm getting off topic with that said some times its very warm, i just think of it as free weight loss from the weight gain in the winter
Hi Murray...Nope..so far all the law states is a reflective vest. But from what I was told this law is going to change, so that the vest has to have reflective strips front and back, and it has to be CSA approved. The CSA approved vest has the reflective strips front/back and on the sides. We are now using the CSA approved vests, and we chose the velco tear away...for a couple of reasons. With the velco the vests are adjustable so that if you need to wear it over a coat you can. We work around woodchippers at times as well so the tear away vest is safer. I am a bit surprised that Irving is going with the lime green vests. We have these for our Ferry people. We work roadside so what would the green blend in with? Trees and machinery...our machinery. Our department did a test to determine which color vest shows up better and the orange won.
Do you get a big bubble with that? Seriously that's a lot of PPE how does it reflect with on the job injuries? Here it's saftey glasses and on some job sites a hard hat.
I think the steel toe cutting toes off is a myth. I have dropped plenty of heavy stuff on mine and dang glad I had them on. Yes the steel can get cold, but if you are wearing insulated boots you wont notice. I have a pair of whites smokejumpers non insulated I have never felt the cold at the toe. It comes up through the ground. But they also make a (cant remember name celastic or some such) but basically plastic steel toe. Oh hard hat ear muffs cut resistent chaps and steel toe boots.
Yeah I thought that took affect since of the cases where people's vests caught on things and wouldn't tear away and that was a big deal to the workers comp folks. The lime green vests were tested on the railway and were given good reviews by people who never come outside of their office and now Kents is having their people wear them and now its Gulf and woodlands turn but I agree in the woods or in traffic I don't see the advantage or the reason for added costs as these are a specialty vest and not the average orange that can be purchased from any commercial dealer. Also seen a TV commercial for the DOT plow trucks,you have your hand in that at all?
Shhhh..top secret stuff Can't highjack my own thread and give Squizzy an opening to finish it off
I smell an emmy lol.
Too late...did I tell you the one about the landscaper? See this landscaper lands a job as a labourer for this big company and has to push a wheelbarrow all week. The wheel on the barrow goes. squeak................squeak.....................squeak..................squeak at the end of the week the labourer has had enough of the squeaky barrow and goes to see the foreman. The foreman asks what the trouble is to which the labourer says the wheel goes; squeak.................squeak.....................squeak................squeak! The foreman listens to this and says OK...get your gear and get out of here...your fired!. The labourer says WT...what did I do?...and the foreman says your wheelbarrow should be going; squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak Ok so its an audio joke
Dad told me that he knew a contractor that would ask a laborer, at about 2:30 in the afternoon, if he was tired. If the guy answered "no", he'd get fired... Back on topic...(sorry Squizzy)... Working primarily on residential sites, I generally have no protective gear on at all. On those rare occasions when I'm spending any amount of time in a ditch that's deep enough for shoring, I'll wear a hardhat. It's been quite a while since I worked anywhere near moving traffic, so having high visibility clothing hasn't really been a factor in quite a while. Oh, but if I'm doing something noisy, like running a breaker, Ill use some sort of hearing protection. (But that's kind of like closeing the barn door after the horse has run away...)
The one thing that we are guilty of is dust protection...we are always trying to keep sites wet to stop the dust but our saw is often run dry and there is always a lot of dust around.....we wear masks for concrete cutting...and get the full kit on for asbestos fencing...but the rest of the time there is stuff flying everywhere. There is the one about the Irishman........
Just for you, I bumped the St Paddy's day joke thread back to the top. Let's hear it.
Safety vests, hardhats and safety glasses. I don't like steel toe boot because if you drop something heavy on them they'll cut your toes off instead of crushing them. I know it sounds weird, but I've heard stories about steel toe boots.
I almost forgot two of the most important items, safety glasses and earplugs when needed. I keep my personal pair of earplugs in the work truck and a box of cheap ones for anyone that needs them. I used to hardly ever wear safety glasses when doing things like using the concrete saw or the breaker on our backhoe but after i got something in my eye that bugged me for a few days i keep a pair in the truck.
Ever notice everyone has heard stories of steel toes cutting off toes. But yet I have never met anyone thats lost toes to them. On the other hand I bet you could find a ton of guys that still have toes because of them. Not saying it couldn't happen. But the size/weight of said object would have to be great. So if you dropped said weight on feet without steel toes it would destroy your foot anyway. So for all the times that are'nt as extrem you saved your feet.
http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2005/11/episode_42_steel_toe_amputatio.html
big bubble no bubble yet i work on the highway all the time .everyday we are digging around other utilitys. the proban clothing has cut down on alot of flash burns from damaged electric cables...some of which you only have to look at and they pop we are replacing the victorian water network in london and many of the cables are very old and not in very good condition,alot of the crap put into the ground after the bombings in the war ,ash ,clinker etc has attacked the casings of the cables and rotted them .the client is very strict on saftey.last weeks saftey meeting was about a jcb driver on a different contract had somehow dropped a bucket when doing a 3 point turn within the saftey fence.we were told he lifted the rear arm over the fence and the second bucket he was carrying fell off and struck a old man killing him instantly.the driver then lied to the paramedics saying it fell and the bang shocked him and gave him a heart attack but the post mortem showed massive crush injuries and he is now under arrest ,so last weeks audit was looking at the diggers ,saftey pin in quick hitch ,how we carry our buckets,log book filled in and up to date ,and a check on licences
Funny when I was typing myth I thought about mythbusters. Guess that myth is busted.
I should ware per our company vest, hard hat, safety glasses, and min a t-shirt above and beyond normal work ware. However I don't do the hard hat unless there is something above me, safety glasses while operation, vest or t-shirt when I get hot. IMO most of this stuff is unnecessary, and I always have ear plugs with me.
Hard Hats These hard hats are designed to protect your ears from the sun. We have them for our people but I find them a tad heavy.
Hard hats while out of the machine, safety glasses when needed but everybody uses the sunglass style and wears them all the time, long pants, shirts with sleaves, hi-viz around traffic and steel toed boots - I will take my chances:cool2 I usually wear the sunglass style safety glasses instead of regular sunglasses off the job. If you lose them or drop them in the water your only out $2.
Hardhats, safety glasses, steeltoe boots and hi-vis vest when outside with ear plugs if the situation requires them. I actually don't feel right if I don't have this stuff on since I'm used to wearing. All this is required by MSHA and it has a no tolerance policy. My safety shades, as I call them, I wear during the day instead sunglasses cause if I lose a pair then I got a whole box in the truck. I wear my boots everywhere, on the clock or off. I actually went and bought me a different hardhat then the one I was given. Its a cowboy hat shaped hardhat. It really looks pretty spiffy and the chicks dig it. :thumbsup
LOL..Funny that you mention that. Some of our guy's were inquiring to see it they could purchase this style of hardhat. We only have the two styles avalable..the kind in the above picture and the regular style. Hopefully the chicks around here will understand
Country Boy- I bet that cowboy hardhat goes over well at the local hangout. http://www.hardhats.4ursafety.com/cowboy-hard-hat.html
Check out CM1995's link. Those are pretty much the same thing as mine. I got mine at Harbor Freight. Can't remember how much I paid for it though.
I have a question for you concerning PPE for the work that you do. You obviously run a chainsaw, as part of your PPE is cut resistant chaps and ear muffs on the hardhat. Actually I have four questions... What do you prefer the chaps or the chainsaw pants? Do you use a foresters screen or visor for eye/face protection? Do you wear safety glasses as well? Chainsaw boots? Just curious..
I have both pants and chaps. I like the pants in summer and chaps in winter. Mainly because in the winter the pants get wet then i'm wet. So the chaps give me that extra protection from the snow. I use the husqvarna helmet with face screen. Dont use safety glasses because they fog up or sweat is dripping on them. Dont have the chainsaw safe boots, just steel toe.
Thanks for the info. I think the ultimate protection is the face screen with the safety glasses on as well. The screen protects your face, but a limb/stub etc. could come through the screen and take out your eye. But you are right, as I have hear this complaint before about the safety glasses fogging up. This would be a safety concern as you have to see what you are doing. You can buy the goggles that have battery operated fans in the sides to prevent fogging
Thanks i'll take my chances
LOL...Figgered you would
In the 15 years of running chainsaws I never worn safety glasses with my hard hat and screen. My safety gear is always in the truck I have two pairs of Peltor ear muffs the ones with the green cups and the bright orange cups. The green ones have a higher decible rating. I have altleast 3 pairs of gloves in the truck, my fallers hat,safety glasses,high vis rain jacket. I always wear steel toed boots my pair of vibergs weigh 10lbs for the pair. The most important safety item I wear that I never go on a job or run a machine without with it my ear muffs. I never used to wear hearing protection in my earlier years then I had my hearing tested back in 2001 I was 24 then the woman said I have damaged my hearing. Both my grandpa's both gone now but when they were alive both of them stone deaf. Both worked in the steel industry and in those days shoving cotton balls into their ears was the only form of ear protection.
Do you wear the "chainsaw boots" when operating a chainsaw?
:eek2 I think the klingon's wore those in Star Trek the Wrath of Khan.
I don't wear chainsaw boots either not many guys do but they do wear Viberg Boots like I do but they wear caulks (cork boots) I wear my 151X which is a logger boot without spikes. The most important thing to wear is chaps or like I do fallers pants it helps protect your legs. I have said it before but I'am more scared of a 7 1/4 circular saw than I'am a big Stihl with a 36 inch bar. The saw I learned with was a old 051 Stihl the sucker weighs 20lbs dad had a 36" bar on it with 404 full skip chain. You forget to push the decomp when starting it the pull cord would rip out of your fingers and hurt like you wouldn't beleive. I bucked many many cords of fire wood with the saw. It has less hp than a 066 Magnum but the 051 has the low end torque it pulls the 404 full chisel chain through hard pitch streaked doug fir with ease. You loose your eye sight or your hearing it makes life miserable so safety glasses and hearing protection should be number 1 priority. The workers compensation rules in B.C. are so frigging strict and the requirements they want you to put on. By the time you get all your safety stuff on you can't move. The biggest piece of safety equipment you have on is your brain you have to be aware of what your doing. If your in La La land your going to get hurt.
:iagree LT - well said.
I have seen it guys not paying attention and then they get hurt. Myself when I'am feeling tired and I know I'am making mistakes thats it for the day. When I was running backhoe for the contractor I was exhausted and fell out of the machine I wasn't paying attention my foot slipped. One of the reasons why I quit the contractor I was working for because it was push push push.
Hardhat, safety glasses, safety vests, and steel toed boots. These are required at all times. Insurance companies like to see it as part of your company safety policy. From a practical standpoint - if you require it at all times the PPE is always present. It's inevitable that if you go from a residential/subdivision type job to a larger commercial/governmental job the guys will have forgotten to bring their PPE. Face shields, earplugs, metacarpal protection, dustmasks, or respirators as needed. Again, as outlined by company safety policy. Around these parts the cowboy style hardhats are not allowed on most sites.:beatsme Lime green vest vs. orange vests: I'd always heard that the thought behind lime green vests was to differentiate roadway workers from traffic barriers. Personally I prefer orange, but we allow either.
I had a "jersey" barrier fall off a forklift and crush my foot. I by no means expect a steel toe to do anything in this instance, the short ones weigh between 5400-5600 pounds. The steel toe split and cut between my big toe and my first toe. It also folded in from the big toe side and cut to the bone. It didn't cut any toes off but the doc had to take half the foot 2wk later. Like I said, this is extreme weight but I still wear them, I'm kind partial to the other toes. I try to stay away from barriers also
I wonder what your injuries would have been without steel toes?
LOL..Good show wasn't it? You guy's are going to think that the law's here in N.B. are quite strick, but we have to wear the chainsaw boots...It's the law. There are different types other than the "Klingon" style that is acceptable as well. This is how it reads in the OHSA 346 An employer shall, in addition to complying with the appropriate requirements for protective equipment under Part VII, ensure that an employee who operates a chain saw wears (a) safety footwear that meets the requirements of CSA standard CAN/CSA-Z195-M92, "Protective Footwear" or a standard offering equivalent protection, has chain saw protection on the top and sides and has non-slip soles, I highlighted the part about chainsaw protection. I know if a OHS officer came on any type of forestry operation here in the province, and caught someone operating a chainsaw without the proper chainsaw boots on... :shf
Steve, I think the end results would have been the same, it was so much weight nothing would have helped.
Actualy sounds to me that the steel toe absorbed some of the impact. If you didn't have them on do you think your foot would have been in a condition, in which you could tell that. I'm no forensics expert but I would think your foot would have been completly crushed.
Hard Hat Colors Since I rarely go onto a "big job" site I have a question. Do the different colors of hard hats really identify job positions on a site? I was told way back when that the white hat was the foreman and yellow was the worker, but now I see that they come in blue, orange, red, black etc. etc. Are each of these a different job or just a fashion statement?
It used to be, here at the quarry, white/supervisor, red/employee and yellow/new hire under 60 days. This changed with new management because they said that everyone should be equal. Everybody then got new white hard hats except the new hires, who still wore yellow so we could keep our eye on them. I and a very few others have blue hard hats to signify emergency personel in case of emergency so we can be easily identified. I still wear my Cowboy hard hat though as everybody knows me.
We still run by the color of the hardhat rule. Basically it goes from white, blue to orange. White being the head of the class so to speak.
Woodee, I too had a heavy weight fall on my foot. It was aprox. 8,000lbs. Didtn get the whole weight on my toe fortunately, but definately felt it. I was not wearing steel toe but I was on grass so I think the ground got most of the impact. The knuckle on my big toe ( i call him the captain) popped like a top. No cuts or nerve damage but had a complete and clean break of the toe. Healed pretty well except for the nail is still trying to grow back. This was almost a year ago and the most important thing i learned was to stand back especially when too many people are in a small area. I actually think the steel toe would have caused more damage in this instance.:beatsme
All this talk of colored hardhats gives me an idea. I think I just figured out what I'm going to get Squizzy for Christmas. No self-respecting Limestone Wall Builder and Thread Hi-Jacker should be without one. :avid :falldownlaugh :lmao BTW...for anyone else looking for gift ideas for Squizzy, they also have matching pink work gloves and pink toolbelts. :stirthepot Joe
Just can't wait for christmas ....Maybe I chose the wrong colour for the trailer
I even checked out all the hard hats today in the safety shop...nope...no pink ones.....I even asked for a cowboy one and they laughed at me Ya gunna have to mail it over ointhead
Here you go Squiz- http://www.discountsafetygear.com/pihahatbyno.html When I had a big building job going we kept pink hardhats around for the guys that "forgot they needed a hardhat". It's funny, after a couple of times of wearing a pink hard hat they seemed to remember to bring one.
I'm really surprised that chainsaw boots are not required by law in B.C. Your province is into the foresty operations big time is it not? I know safety equipment can be a pain in the rear end at times, but without it especially operating a chainsaw... I agree with your comment about the brain
Hi Guys, I have started to write a new posts for me PPE blog and wondered if anyone knew any great places to buy PPE equipment, I wanted to get some immediate feedback from some people in the industry. I'm trying to make it as independent as possible you see. The blog that i am going to be using is http://ppe-news.co.uk , Please let me know as soon as possible as I'm keen to get it posted.