Safety is the most important thing to remember on a construction site. Whether it’s a large construction site with various trades or redoing the flooring in your home you need to make sure that all safety regulations are followed. There are different Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) needed to ensure the safety of all workers. Let’s keep everyone safe, from head to toe.
HEAD-
Hard hats are a common site on construction site. Everyone knows what they are and why they’re used. But did you know that it’s against the law not to wear one? These are designed to protect against falling objects that could really harm the crewman. Some hard hats come with other PPE attached, like face shields-those we’ll talk about later.
Something that’s incredibly important to remember is that a hard hat must fit properly in order to work properly. Make sure that the hard hat you get can be adjusted to fit you well or you won’t get the protection needed.
EYES AND FACE-
Safety glasses are a necessity for anybody doing any work. These should be polycarbonate and wrap around the face, so they protect not just the front of the eye, but also the sides. Full face shields are available as well, but those are really only needed for specific fields like metal work, woodwork, hot work, and air tool work.
RESPIRATORY-
Respiratory protect is vital in any work environment. This is designed to protect the wearer from toxic substances like dust, fumes, paint spray, pesticides and other harmful substances that could cause permanent damage. These will likely be needed when good ventilation isn’t available.
HANDS AND SKIN-
All construction workers use their hands a lot. Because of this, about 150,000 hand injuries are reported every year. Also, there are occupational skin diseases like skin cancers, dermatitis and other skin injuries. Infections take second place in the occupational disease category.
Glove usage is very important to protect against injury, infection, and skin diseases. Common PPE gloves are rubber, cut-resistant, chainsaw and heat-resistant. Make sure that gloves are a daily part of your PPE to avoid hazards that come up in chemical and other areas of a construction site.
HEARING-
Approximately 82% off occupation hearing loss cases are people working in the manufacturing sector, so ear protection is vital. When you’re working with machines like grinders and vacuums, protect your ears with earplugs or earmuffs or other types of hearing protection PPE.
FEET-
To protect the feet from things like toe breakage or other injuries steel toed boots are a requirement. These offer a steel cup that covers the toes and front of the foot and offers protection from things like dropping something on the foot.
Most companies will provide at least the small PPE items, like safety glasses and earplugs/earmuffs. A lot will give their employees all of the items needed, or even reimburse the employees for purchase of things like the steel-toed boots. Anyway you cut it, these things are necessary equipment to save you from injury and/or infection. This needs to be taken seriously.
Here at PFS our employees take advantage of our PPE policy and all are required to wear Hard hats, respirators or face masks, gloves, earplugs, steel toed boots and high visibility shirts in safety green. Make sure even if you’re working on your own in your home you take advantage of all PPE.