Blood Borne Pathogen Safety

Blood borne pathogens can be quite the haz­ard in the work­place. Be sure to know the OSHA reg­u­la­tions and company’s expo­sure con­trol plan to increase safe­ty when present.

Video Tran­script:

Speak­er 1:

What in the world? Is that blood. Hey, Den­nis, can I get your help in here for a second?

Den­nis:

What hap­pened? Oh wow.

Speak­er 1:

I don’t know man. I came in here to wash my hands and it looks like some­one might have cut them­selves or, shoot, maybe some­one just spilled some­thing. I’m not sure. But I want­ed to get your opin­ion and see what we need to do with it.

Den­nis:

Well, if it is not blood, we still need to treat it as blood.

Speak­er 1:

Okay, so should I just wipe it up then or-?

Den­nis:

No. No. Don’t wipe it up because it could pos­si­bly be a blood­borne pathogen.

Speak­er 1:

What’s a blood­borne pathogen?

Den­nis:

Well, a blood­borne pathogen is a microor­gan­ism that can cause dis­ease from an infect­ed indi­vid­ual to anoth­er indi­vid­ual either through blood or oth­er infec­tious materials.

Speak­er 1:

What kind of dis­eases are you talk­ing about?

Den­nis:

Oh, we’re talk­ing about hepati­tis C, hepati­tis B and HIV.

Speak­er 1:

Wow, this is a big deal then. So how does it go from being on the counter to caus­ing me a dis­ease though?

Den­nis:

Well, you can have as sim­ple as a cut or abra­sion or you can ingest it by acci­dent and then there you go.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. So you men­tioned it can be in oth­er stuff. I think you said oth­er poten­tial­ly infec­tious material.

Den­nis:

Yes.

Speak­er 1:

What kind of stuff are you talk­ing about?

Den­nis:

Well, we’re talk­ing about bod­i­ly flu­ids such as sweat, vom­it, through saliva.

Speak­er 1:

Wait a sec­ond. So you’re say­ing any of those things could have a blood­borne pathogen in it?

Den­nis:

Yes, pos­si­bly.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. So if I’m com­ing to do my nor­mal rou­tine, though, and I’m going to clean the bath­room, does that mean I have to treat all of those things like blood?

Den­nis:

Neg­a­tive. You don’t always have to treat it all like blood, only if you see blood with­in them.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. So it could be in those things, but only if they have blood in them.

Den­nis:

Exact­ly.

Speak­er 1:

Gotcha. So what we need to do to clean this up then?

Den­nis:

Well let me go grab my blood­borne pathogen kit and then I’ll show you how do we do it?

Speak­er 3:

All right, team. Time for your blood­borne pathogen safe­ty train­ing, pro safe­ty tip num­ber one. Blood­borne pathogens can be found in any bod­i­ly flu­id that con­tains blood. So if you encounter some­thing that looks like it could be blood or it might have blood in it, you need to treat it like blood. Also, blood­borne pathogens car­ry dis­eases that can be very harm­ful, includ­ing hepati­tis C, hepati­tis B and HIV. And final­ly, blood­borne pathogens can be trans­mit­ted any time there is blood to blood contact.

Den­nis:

I got everything.

Speak­er 1:

All right. What do we need to do to get this thing cleaned up?

Den­nis:

Well, the first thing we do is quar­an­tine this area to block any­thing from any­body com­ing in here to the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed area.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. All right.

Den­nis:

The sec­ond thing we need to do is con­tact our man­ag­er and let them know that we encoun­tered a blood spill.

Speak­er 1:

Gotcha.

Den­nis:

And then the last thing we need to do is we need to clean this thing up with this blood­borne pathogen kit.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. What’s that sym­bol you’re point­ing to?

Den­nis:

Well, this is a bio­haz­ard sym­bol. So what that does is let peo­ple know that after we’re done clean­ing this, that we need to put this in a haz­ardous mate­ri­als waste bag. And so that all con­t­a­m­i­nants are con­cealed and peo­ple know that this is a dan­ger­ous sub­stance in this bag.

Speak­er 1:

Gotcha. All right, Den­nis. What are we doing on the floor?

Den­nis:

Well first off, we want to make sure we’re a good dis­tance away, there­fore we don’t get any con­t­a­m­i­nant on the PPE, what’s in this box, because right now it’s sterile.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. All right. So let’s get in there and show me how to use this thing.

Den­nis:

Yeah. So let me break open this kit and show you these sup­plies that are in here.

Speak­er 1:

Now I heard you say, ​“break it open.” So what hap­pens if this kit’s already been opened?

Den­nis:

Well if it’s already been open, then we need to take pre­cau­tion and get anoth­er kit.

Speak­er 1:

Okay.

Den­nis:

Because what hap­pens is then this could poten­tial­ly be con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed already.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. So we need to be using a new kit.

Den­nis:

Ster­ile.

Speak­er 1:

Okay.

Den­nis:

Got to make sure it’s ster­ile. Correct.

Speak­er 1:

Gotcha.

Den­nis:

So here we have a mask.

Speak­er 1:

Okay.

Den­nis:

We have a lit­tle shov­el or dust­pan as I will call it. It’s for if we ever have vom­it spills as such, which has poten­tial blood in it or blood in it. So pret­ty much what you would do is use this as a scoop­er to scoop it up once it’s dried up using Vom­it [Ex 00:04:38].

Speak­er 1:

Okay.

Den­nis:

Okay. This being the stuff you would pour on the vom­it. Let it have a [Inaudi­ble 00:04:40] time of two min­utes for it to dry up the vom­it. Our booties, so this goes on the bot­tom of your shoes or around your shoes. You could actu­al­ly put them over top of your shoes.

Speak­er 1:

I can see that would be real­ly impor­tant if the spill were on the floor.

Den­nis:

Exact­ly.

Speak­er 1:

Okay.

Den­nis:

Then we have a pair of gloves. And look at this, we’ve got a bio­haz­ard bag. So that same sym­bol you’ve seen on the out­side of the box, it’s right here on this bag as well.

Speak­er 1:

Okay, so every­thing when we get done-

Den­nis:

It goes in here.

Speak­er 1:

All right.

Den­nis:

Cor­rect.

Speak­er 1:

Good deal.

Den­nis:

And we have our safe­ty gog­gles. And this is absorbent if you were to place over your­self and it goes around you like a smock.

Speak­er 1:

Okay.

Den­nis:

There­fore any splat­ter or any­thing like that, that were to get on you, gets on here. Got lit­tle tow­elettes, san­i­tiz­ing wipes. And also we have ger­mi­ci­dal dis­pos­able wipes as well and we have our lit­tle twisty ties that we tie on around the bag to make sure there’s no leak­age com­ing from here. So once you’re done, every­thing’s in the bag. Tie the tie around the bag and there­fore tie it tight enough, so if it were some­body would hold it upside down, there’s no leak­age com­ing out of the bag.

Speak­er 1:

All right.

Den­nis:

Okay. This being what you place over the spill itself, get­ting it up, because what we need to do is we have our dis­in­fec­tant, blot this up, make sure it’s dry, then you take our dis­in­fec­tant and we sat­u­rate the sur­face area.

Speak­er 1:

All right. Well I guess let’s suit up and get this thing cleaned up.

Speak­er 3:

Blood­borne pathogen safe­ty train­ing pro safe­ty tip num­ber two. As soon as you encounter the spill, make sure you block the area off to keep oth­ers away from the poten­tial haz­ard. And con­tact your man­ag­er as soon as you find out about the spill, espe­cial­ly if it’s a large spill that could indi­cate some­one might have been seri­ous­ly hurt. Final­ly open the blood­borne pathogen kit far away from the spill and care­ful­ly read through the instruc­tions because not all blood­borne pathogen kits are exact­ly the same.

Speak­er 1:

You’re all suit­ed up. So what’s next?

Den­nis:

All right. First thing I want to do is I want to exam­ine the area, make sure I got every­thing with­in the con­tents of what I’m going to clean. And the first thing you’re going to give me is that absorbent paper tow­el. Okay? Then what we’re going to do is take the absorbent papers tow­el and we’re going to wipe all this loose liq­uid up, which is the bod­i­ly flu­ids and blood. You got to be very care­ful when you’re wip­ing. You don’t want to make any splat­ters because it could splat­ter on the ground and then we just expand our sur­face area of clean­ing. Okay?

Den­nis:

And then you put the con­tents in the red bio­haz­ard bag, and next you’re going to hand me the ger­mi­ci­dal wipes. So here you need to let it sit for two min­utes, sat­u­rate the area or until air dry. Okay? Still be very care­ful when clean­ing this and make sure we get it all. This will dis­in­fect any hepati­tis B or poten­tial com­mon ill­ness­es. You want to get it real­ly good. You can nev­er be too cau­tious or too safe when doing this. Then you put the con­tents in the red bio­haz­ard bag.

Speak­er 1:

All right, now we’re going to let it for two min­utes or until it air dries.

Den­nis:

Cor­rect.

Speak­er 1:

All right, so it’s been two min­utes. Now what?

Den­nis:

Now you’re going to hand me those moist towlettes right there and I’m going to fin­ish com­plet­ing san­i­tiz­ing the sur­face. Now mind you, you always want to kind of be think­ing while you’re doing this and be cau­tious. You can nev­er be too cau­tious and then move too slow, because what hap­pens is as you see, I still have my arms exposed and I can acci­den­tal­ly touch it and I have a abra­sion or some­thing in my arm or a cut. So now I’m just going to wipe the sur­face as before, and I’m going to place this con­tent in the red bio­haz­ard bag as well.

Speak­er 1:

All right, now what?

Den­nis:

Now we’re going to take the red bio­haz­ard bag and we’re going to place it on the ground and I’m going to start to declothe. I’m going to start from head to toe. Always remem­ber head to toe, gloves being last. The rea­son why gloves being last is because you always want to touch all the oth­er parts of the PPE and make sure you take those off and then the gloves would be last­ly dis­closed into the red bio­haz­ard bag.

Speak­er 1:

Okay.

Den­nis:

Okay, so I’m going to start with my gog­gles first. Then I’m going to take off my face mask.

Speak­er 1:

I notice it’s impor­tant not to touch your face, right?

Den­nis:

Not to touch your face at all. Then my smock. And then my booties. Then I want to tie the con­tents of this bag up with the red zip ties. Thank you. And we want to make sure this is tight­ly sealed. The rea­son being we don’t want any leaks or blood com­ing out of the bag, so we want to make sure that we real­ly get this real­ly tight. And then, very imper­a­tive and impor­tant when you’re doing this last step is how you take these gloves off. Okay? So you’re going to take the first glove inside out and you’re going to place that in the hand with the glove on. And then you take inside out over top of the glove that was in the hand on and you dis­pose of it into the red bag. And then you take the con­tents here, place it in a red bio­haz­ard bag and the last zip tie being as such.

Speak­er 1:

All right, very good. So now what are we going to do with that bag?

Den­nis:

Now it depends on your site. So job spe­cif­ic site, how­ev­er they want to dis­pose of the bags is how you dis­pose of it. You con­tact your man­ag­er if you have any questions.

Speak­er 1:

So every account should have a way to get rid of a bio­haz­ard bag.

Den­nis:

Exact­ly.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. All right. Last ques­tion for you. I noticed in this kit that there was this lit­tle pink form. Can you tell me what this is?

Den­nis:

Yes. So the employ­ee or the per­son clean­ing the spill needs to record it. This is very vital, OSHA reg­u­la­tions. So what you’re going to do is you’re going to date, time, expo­sure, employ­ee, your name, the loca­tion, what site you’re at, whether that’s being at Bap­tist Health or wher­ev­er, sources expo­sure, whether that’s blood or what was exposed, what­ev­er that might be. And then the type of spill, whether it was blood, vom­it, urine, feces or oth­er. Then the cause of the inci­dent and explain that. And then once you’re done it just asks if you instruct­ed and did the way it was sup­posed to be done by pro­ce­dure, you check yes. And then from there you fill that out, give that to your manager.

Speak­er 1:

Awe­some. All right, well very good. Let’s go debrief back at your office if that’s all right.

Den­nis:

That sounds great. All right, man. Hey, any­time the last step when you’re clean­ing up a blood­borne pathogen spill, you got to wash your hands for 30 sec­onds. So I’ll meet you in my office. All right?

Speak­er 1:

All right, sounds good.

Den­nis:

Sounds great. So, in this video, as you may have been aware, [Hal­ston 00:13:32] was not wear­ing the prop­er PPE, but if it was real blood, which it was­n’t, it was ketchup and some­body is accom­mo­dat­ing you when you’re clean­ing the blood­borne pathogen spill, make sure they’re wear­ing the prop­er PPE. Also, all blood­borne pathogen kits are not the same, so you might have a dif­fer­ent one at your site. If you do, make sure you fol­low the pro­ce­dures with what is in that box. And also going for­ward just want to make sure if you don’t have a blood­borne pathogen kit, make sure you con­tact your man­ag­er so he can get you one there immediately.

Speak­er 3:

Time for blood­borne pathogen safe­ty train­ing pro safe­ty tip num­ber three. Use extreme cau­tion when you put on your per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment that’s in the blood­borne pathogen kit and make sure you put on every­thing that is includ­ed. Fol­low the steps in the blood­borne pathogen kit exact­ly to clean up the spill, pay­ing extra spe­cial atten­tion to the time that’s need­ed to kill the poten­tial haz­ardous mate­r­i­al. Move care­ful­ly and slow­ly when remov­ing the per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment and always remove your gloves last.

Speak­er 1:

Man, it sounds like there’s a lot to this blood­borne pathogen thing.

Den­nis:

Oh most definitely.

Speak­er 1:

So if I’m one of your employ­ees and I want to find out some more infor­ma­tion about this stuff, where can I go to find that?

Den­nis:

Well there’s two places you can go. So it’s OSHA 1910 Book of Stan­dards and then the sec­ond place is Budd Group’s Expo­sure Con­trol Plan.

Speak­er 1:

Okay, that’s right. Yeah. So if any employ­ee has more ques­tions, they can con­tact their man­ag­er and they can either take them to the Book of Standards-

Den­nis:

Cor­rect.

Speak­er 1:

… which out­lines what com­pa­nies need to have to be in com­pli­ance or they could take them to the Expo­sure Con­trol Plan that The Budd Group has, which is Budd Group spe­cif­ic. It just talks about how The Budd Group com­mu­ni­cates around a poten­tial exposure.

Den­nis:

Exact­ly.

Speak­er 1:

So let’s say one of your employ­ees does get exposed. What hap­pens? What should they do?

Den­nis:

They need to con­tact their man­ag­er imme­di­ate­ly first and then from there they’ll con­tact Med­cor and go from there and go through the process of what stan­dard pro­ce­dures would be.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. So they’re fol­low­ing the nor­mal acci­dent procedure.

Den­nis:

Cor­rect.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. Any­thing else that you would rec­om­mend if they have been exposed?

Den­nis:

Yes, so imme­di­ate­ly after con­tact­ing your man­ag­er, you would go flood that area for 30 sec­onds with warm water and soap and just make sure you vig­or­ous­ly, not tear­ing at your skin, but vig­or­ous­ly with a lit­tle bit of pres­sure on that area, clean­ing that surface.

Speak­er 1:

Gotcha. So we fol­lowed the acci­dent pro­ce­dure. Like­ly they’re going to tell us we need to go to the hos­pi­tal and at the hos­pi­tal, a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al is going to walk us through get­ting test­ed and see­ing if we have been exposed to some­thing and then kind of walk us through that process.

Den­nis:

Yes.

Speak­er 1:

It sounds like you know a lot about these dis­eases and blood­borne pathogens. Could you tell me a lit­tle bit more about hepati­tis B?

Den­nis:

Yeah. So hepati­tis B, it’s very nasty. For one, it will inflame your liv­er so it attacks your liv­er, cre­at­ing scar tis­sue over and over again. Cir­rho­sis of the liv­er, which cause liv­er fail­ure. The oth­er one could be genet­i­cal­ly passed from you to your child, your infant. And that is 90% of the case your child will con­tract if you have hepati­tis B.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. So I have heard that that is what we’re most like­ly to be exposed to because so many peo­ple don’t even know that they have hepati­tis B. So is there any­thing that we can do to pre­vent our­selves from being exposed?

Den­nis:

Yes. So there’s hepati­tis B vac­ci­na­tion. So that’s a series of shots over three stages that lasts about three to six months.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. So it takes three to six months to get to the shots and then the actu­al vac­ci­na­tion is good for at least 10 years?

Den­nis:

Cor­rect.

Speak­er 1:

Okay. So what if I’m an employ­ee and I want to get the hepati­tis B vac­ci­na­tion. What do I need to do?

Den­nis:

Well, y’all are in luck here because at Budd Group we offer it for free for our employ­ees. So when you’re ini­tial­ly being hired, they give you this form to fill out whether you want to decline or accept the offer that we do give to our employ­ees for hepati­tis B vaccination.

Speak­er 1:

That’s right. And even if you’ve decid­ed upfront that you don’t want it or maybe you had it and you don’t need it, but lat­er down the road you think, ​“I do want to go get it.” It’s still okay. Just con­tact your man­ag­er and they’ll walk you through the process of get­ting that vac­ci­na­tion started.

Den­nis:

Most def­i­nite­ly.

Speak­er 1:

Awe­some. Well, man, I real­ly appre­ci­ate your time today. It’s been super help­ful and infor­ma­tive for me. I hope maybe you learned a lit­tle some­thing along the way.

Den­nis:

Yes, I did.

Speak­er 1:

And I’m sure I’ll see you soon.

Den­nis:

Yes, thank you, man.

Speak­er 1:

All right.

Speak­er 3:

All right, team, time for your final blood­borne pathogen safe­ty train­ing pro safe­ty tip. You can request a copy of OSHA’s reg­u­la­to­ry text or the Budd Group’s expo­sure con­trol plan from your super­vi­sor at any time. And if you have been exposed, con­tact your man­ag­er and fol­low The Budd Group acci­dent report­ing process imme­di­ate­ly. Final­ly, hepati­tis B is a poten­tial­ly fatal dis­ease that can be pre­vent­ed through a vac­ci­na­tion that The Budd Group offers to all employ­ees. If you have ques­tions about this vac­ci­na­tion, sim­ply ask your manager.

The Budd Group strives to be a God-hon­or­ing com­pa­ny of excel­lence safe­ly deliv­er­ing ser­vices in jan­i­to­r­i­al, main­te­nance, and land­scap­ing; offer­ing devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for their employ­ees; and con­tribut­ing to their community.

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