holy cow ...

So, we all have our opinions about PPE. We express them to our employers / employees. Most likely repeatedly. In detail. We wonder at times (or at least I do), where all this information goes. Does an employee take this to another job? Does my colleague tell his kid to be safe? Well, I just had the most amazing thing happen. I got quoted on Minnesota Public Radio's Marketplace website. I have never had my professional opinion put forth in such a public manner. Of course, what happens? My husband then starts arguing about whether this statement is actually 100% true. Well, what if Respirator A is actually a bit more effective than Respirator B, although both are marketed as N-95? If A is more expensive than B, then my statement to MPR is invalid ... I suppose I should have argued in that case, if B is more expensive than A, then I could equally have said cheaper is better, and been equally wrong. As if anything in the world is ever 100% exactly the same 100% of the time ...

Bitrex

Good heavens, this stuff tastes gross! Last night's class on respirators ended with a call for volunteers to go through a qualitative fit-test with a filtering face-piece respirator. How do you know if it's a respirator or a dust mask? If it says NIOSH, it's a respirator. There being only 6 people in the class, it's not as though one can hide in the back of the room. No one seemed to be leaping at the opportunity, so I volunteered. I guess there's benefits of being the oldest student - I'm pretty immune to most things that embarrass my younger classmates. I've never done qualitative fit testing before, only the quantitative method. They used bitrex as the sensory stimulus. They asked if I knew what it tasted like, simply to avoid having to check. I got a whiff of it once, being in close proximity to someone getting this done. Blech. Since we weren't waiting 1 minute for each of these activities (reading, turning head, lifting chin, etc), I was getting one whopping huge amount of bitrex pumped into the Bag On Head. They're looking kind of curious - I'm not sure why. The whole point is to demonstrate that even an N95 (read: not an N100) is perfectly capable of protecting against this stuff. Then ... wham. The standard bug-eyed, open mouth, sounds of disgust and grabbing for the hood. An hour later walking through campus with some classmates, I licked my lips only to realize it was still there. I think recommending employees rinse their face should be required, whether or not they fail. I failed on the step requiring someone to bend over. I'm not toooo surprised. It wasn't fitting really well under my chin. I was actually surprised it fit as well as it did. I'm curious about what size I was wearing - despite being a woman, I have a fairly broad face. I wear a size Large for full-face respirators, and depending on the manufacturer either Medium or Large for the half-face fitted ones. Yet another reason to offer multiple sizes to employees and make them try on more than one size. Of course you have them, because you're required to (1910.134 Apdx A - first point made) - but you should make them try more than one. Curiously, a rep from 3M told me that different chemicals are used in different countries. Not a surprising statement, eh? But ... apparently there is a distinct difference in sensitivity to some of the compounds. Americans have a lower sensitivity to one of the sweet-smelling chemicals, presumably due to the high sugar content of our regular diets.

Pop Culture PPE

If Bob the Builder can do it, so can you. Every time I've seen Bob the Builder (quite often with a 3 yr. old son), he always wears PPE. He was going at it with a jack hammer wearing: ear muffs, a hard hat, work gloves, and safety glasses. Working on a scaffold? Wearing a fall-harness. Brain wash 'em young to be safe. There is a balance in the workplace between 'safety' and 'practicality'. Hence having an hierarchy of controls, rather than just a monolith. This is particularly noticeable in Hollywood. In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne is in the process of building the first Bat Suit, spray painting it Menacing Black. What is he wearing? Some short-sleeved shirt to make sure you notice Christian Bale has nice arms. But, he's wearing a nice half-face respirator. The filter cartridges of which do look like 3M's organic vapor/HCl/etc. No safety glasses, though. I suppose after paying an actor millions of dollars for his image, you need to make sure you get your money's worth. It's amusing. They make the effort to portray a character doing something that is "safe", when pretty much the only folks who would notice are the auto body repair mechanics or industrial hygenists. But Safety only gets a bit-part, a walk-on role, only enough so that ... what? Am I supposed to think Bruce Wayne is 'being safe'? Or did some costume director see some set design gal wearing a respirator while assembling and painting the sets, and think "... ooooh .... that looks kinda menacing?" And now Bat Man is wearing it because it fits in with the 'high tech' glamor going on in those scenes? And yet, only a few scenes later, while using a grinding wheel, he's got safety glasses on. What's the moral? Who cares why they're doing the right thing.