Protecting Your Front Line Workers

Protecting our front line workers has many positive reasons including both selfish and humane.  If a worker is sickened by being exposed to a chemical or pathogen, we not only lose their involvement but also run the risk of them passing on disease to their immediate family and others.  We covered two concepts in a prior article and now will look at a few more:

1.You can type in “toilet sneezing” to see a video produced by a manufacturer that is a slow motion video of the results of a toilet flushing.  The spray travels rapidly into the face of any worker unfortunate enough to be bending over it at the time.  The obvious solution is training the worker to not allow their fact to be in the way of the “sneeze”.  It is also advisable to provide a longer handled bowl swab that reducing their exposure.  Finally, they may be required to wear eye/face protection.

2.Although asbestos is slowly fading into the background and is certainly not used as insulation or sound deadening today, one can still find ACM (Asbestos Containing Materials) or PACM (Potential Asbestos Containing Materials) in nine in square VAT (Vinyl Asbestos Tiles), insulation (usually in the form of powder leaks) and even mastic (glue) used to attach tiles to the floor.  

If you have workers exposed to asbestos, I highly recommend you go to the OSHA website (www.osha.gov) and go beyond compliance whenever possible  A good example is to provide either disposable jumpers and covers that can be disposed of correctly after the work is done.  Do not allow the worker to take clothing (including shoes) home to be laundered.

Protecting your workers is not only smart business.  It is also the right thing to do.

Your comments and questions are important. I hope to hear from you soon. Until then, keep it clean…

Mickey Crowe has been involved in the industry for over 35 years. He is a trainer, speaker and consultant. You can reach Mickey at 678.314.2171 or CTCG50@comcast.net.