Personal Protective Equipment Overview

Prop­er use of per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE) is a very impor­tant com­po­nent of work­place safe­ty. This video is an overview of the best ways to use PPE and when you are to do that.

Video Tran­script:

Speak­er 1:

Hey Budd Group team, thanks for tun­ing in for this mon­th’s safe­ty video. This month we’re actu­al­ly going to be talk­ing about per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment that we use on the job, oth­er­wise known as PPE. We encounter it a lot every sin­gle day. And so we just want to make sure you guys know what we should use, when we should use it and how to do so. And so to help me with that, I have our sea­soned expert here, [Suzanne Klein 00:00:00:45], who’s going to talk through some of the PPE that we might have to where and how we’re going to wear it. So Suzanne, if you would just intro­duce your­self to everybody.

Suzanne Klein:

Hiya all Budd Group, my name is Suzanne Klein and I’m the jan­i­to­r­i­al account man­ag­er here at Con­verse Col­lege in Spar­tan­burg, South Car­oli­na. It’s a small all-girls pri­vate school. The Budd Group has main­te­nance, jan­i­to­r­i­al and land­scap­ing ser­vices here at Converse.

Speak­er 1:

A lot of work.

Suzanne Klein:

Lot of work.

Speak­er 1:

All right. So the first piece of equip­ment that we want to dive into is some­thing that our folks wear every sin­gle day, or they should be. And so that is actu­al­ly a glove like this, which is just a nitrile glove that lots of our folks wear when they’re clean­ing. So Suzanne, I’ll let you take it away. If you’ll just tell us when should we wear these, why should we wear them and what’s the point? And maybe how to wear them, how to take them off.

Suzanne Klein:

Okay, so you should wear the nitrile gloves any­time that you’re encoun­ter­ing a sit­u­a­tion where your skin could be exposed to chem­i­cals or con­t­a­m­i­nants like germs, dirt, espe­cial­ly when you’re han­dling trash or clean­ing bath­rooms. It’s impor­tant to always, always wear them when­ev­er you’re clean­ing. So the best way to put the gloves on is before you start your work. You want to go ahead and get your gloves on before you even start clean­ing. Now, if I was to put this glove on and my fin­ger­nail or my jew­el­ry was to put a hole in it, then I would need to stop what I was doing and get a fresh glove.

Speak­er 1:

Good to know.

Suzanne Klein:

All right, so I am gloved and ready to clean.

Speak­er 1:

All right, so you cleaned a dirty bath­room or you’ve poured out some chem­i­cals, you han­dle what you’re han­dling. What next?

Suzanne Klein:

Okay, so these gloves are now con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed and I want to be espe­cial­ly care­ful when I remove them, that I don’t get the con­t­a­m­i­nants that I wore the gloves to pro­tect myself from in the first place onto my person.

Speak­er 1:

You guys would be sur­prised how often we see this hap­pen. We have employ­ees, all the time, who go through all the right pre­cau­tions to make sure they get the gloves on and they do every­thing they’re sup­posed to do. And then when they get done, they for­get they have the gloves on and they’ll just wipe their eye­brow or scratch their arm or some­thing. And so it’s real­ly impor­tant to remem­ber how to take them off, to make sure that we’re not get­ting any of the con­t­a­m­i­nant on ourselves.

Suzanne Klein:

Right. So once I’m done clean­ing, I want to make sure that I pick up the inside cuff of the glove and roll it care­ful­ly down my hand, so that I’m not touch­ing any of the exte­ri­or part of the glove. I now have a clean inte­ri­or part that I can pick up the glove with and roll it right off and dis­pose of it.

Speak­er 1:

Very good. And I think as an extra prac­tice, any­time you’re remov­ing gloves like that, just to be safe, always best to wash your hands after­wards as well. No mat­ter what you’ve been han­dling. So anoth­er type of glove that we might wear here at the Budd Group would be some­thing that is actu­al­ly a lit­tle bit more like this, a lit­tle thick­er and some­thing that we’re look­ing fo, that has a cut-resis­tant qual­i­ty. And the rea­son is, some­times we end up hav­ing to use a util­i­ty knife like this, to break down box­es or oth­er activ­i­ties like that. So there are knives out there that can help with this task and make it a lit­tle safer. But most of our folks end up using the knives that look just like this. So we want to take a lit­tle bit of time to put these gloves on and show you guys how to do an every­day task like break­ing down a box and make sure that you have the right equip­ment, as well as how to do that cor­rect­ly. So I’ll let you take it away.

Suzanne Klein:

All right. So here is our box and I’m going to be very care­ful to cut away from myself. So run along the edge, run along the edge, down the middle.

Speak­er 1:

And that’s all there is to it.

Suzanne Klein:

And that’s all there is to it. Our box is now safe­ly bro­ken down, ready for recycle.

Speak­er 1:

Extreme­ly impor­tant to cut away from your fin­gers. I remem­ber when I was about sev­en years old, I was doing some­thing with a pock­et knife out­side and cut right down into my fin­ger. Lots of stitch­es, lots of blood, in the emer­gency room. So I learned a valu­able les­son that day. Always cut away from your­self, even if there’s some­thing between the knife and your hand, you’re cut­ting through it. So you nev­er know what might happen.

Suzanne Klein:

Absolute­ly.

Speak­er 1:

All right, well that’s awe­some. So that’s what we need­ed to learn about gloves. Let’s move on to the next piece of equipment.

Speak­er 3:

Pro safe­ty tip num­ber one. Always wear pro­tec­tive gloves when you’re han­dling poten­tial con­t­a­m­i­nants or chem­i­cals. If you notice any holes before or after you put them on, replace them. Remem­ber, don’t touch any parts of your body with the gloves while you’re clean­ing. When you’re fin­ished, remove them safe­ly and avoid touch­ing any exte­ri­or part of the glove. Don’t for­get to wash your hands after­wards. Also, always wear thick cut-resis­tant gloves while han­dling box cut­ters or razor blades. Be sure to cut away from your body and don’t cut near your fin­gers, even if you’re wear­ing gloves.

Suzanne Klein:

Okay, so the next thing I want to talk about are slip-resis­tant shoe cov­ers. I get a ton of ques­tions about these.

Speak­er 1:

Well these are actu­al­ly real­ly great and real­ly impor­tant. About a third of all the acci­dents that hap­pen in the Budd Group are peo­ple slip­ping and falling. And so, our pol­i­cy at the Budd Group is that our employ­ees need to wear slip-resis­tant shoes or shoe cov­ers any­time they’re doing wet work or are in a wet envi­ron­ment. So any­time they’re mop­ping or maybe clean­ing up after a rain or some­thing like that, it’s very impor­tant to wear these.

Suzanne Klein:

Okay. What if my employ­ees have their own slip-resis­tant shoes?

Speak­er 1:

I would say that that is great. I would love to see some type of doc­u­men­ta­tion, like a receipt, show­ing that they are, just to be total­ly sure. But the truth is a slip-resis­tant shoe that actu­al­ly has slip-resis­tant qual­i­ties is going to be even bet­ter than a cov­er. Because it’s on all the time, it’s tight, it’s tied prop­er­ly, and we don’t have to wor­ry about tak­ing it on and off. So I think that’s a great option. Though, I do think it’s very impor­tant that we have some type of doc­u­men­ta­tion. There’s a lot of shoes out there that say some­where in the descrip­tion that they’re slip-resis­tant, but they haven’t actu­al­ly had a slip-resis­tant des­ig­na­tion on them.

Speak­er 1:

Just like get­ting steel-toe shoes, you might get some­thing that feels like it has a hard toe, but that does­n’t mean it has a steel toe in it. So it’s real­ly impor­tant to know that they are actu­al­ly slip-resis­tant shoes. We actu­al­ly would encour­age peo­ple to look into shoes from Shoes For Crews, which is where we get these from.

Suzanne Klein:

Okay, great.

Speak­er 1:

So ques­tion for you, how do you guys keep up with these at your account?

Suzanne Klein:

So what we do here at Con­verse, is we keep sev­er­al pairs in var­i­ous sizes in all of the jan­i­to­r­i­al clos­ets. So that if any­one needs them, when they’re work­ing in the build­ing doing wet work, they can go to the clos­et, locate the slip-resis­tant cov­ers, use them, and then return them to the clos­et so they’re ready for the next person.

Speak­er 1:

That’s great. I think that’s a great solu­tion. As well as, if some­body wants these, and maybe they’re doing what work all the time, that’s almost their sole job func­tion, it’s total­ly okay for our employ­ees to keep a pair of these and wear them all the time. The only thing is, we want to make sure when we’re doing that, that on a dai­ly basis, we’re check­ing and mak­ing sure that these grooves are cleared out. Because some­times they’ll get clogged up with chem­i­cal or they might get clogged up with dust or debris. And if they start get­ting clogged up with stuff, they’re not doing the job they’re sup­posed to do. So that’s these things. I appre­ci­ate you talk­ing about them. Let’s move onto the next thing.

Speak­er 3:

Pro safe­ty tip num­ber two. All employ­ees must wear slip-resis­tant shoes or shoe cov­ers any­time you’re work­ing in or around wet envi­ron­ments. You’re encour­aged to wear your own slip-resis­tant footwear. How­ev­er, make sure you have doc­u­men­ta­tion of your shoe’s slip-resis­tant qual­i­ty avail­able for your man­ag­er. If you need shoe cov­ers, ask your man­ag­er about how to find them. And before you put them on, make sure there’s no build-up in the grooves under­neath the shoe cov­er. Also, make sure your shoe cov­er’s the cor­rect size and fits tight­ly over your per­son­al shoes. This will pre­vent tripping.

Speak­er 1:

So the next piece of per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment that I want­ed to talk about is some­thing which we also should be using on a dai­ly basis, which is safe­ty gog­gles or safe­ty glass­es. So maybe if you could put those on and we’ll talk about how to wear them.

Suzanne Klein:

All right, so I’m going to dawn my safe­ty gog­gles. Oh, fantastic.

Speak­er 1:

Oh boy, you look great.

Suzanne Klein:

I look pret­ty fab­u­lous in these and I think it would be pret­ty good if you woulds to wear some as well.

Speak­er 1:

Oh, okay. All right, I’ll put mine on too-

Suzanne Klein:

We can both look great together.

Speak­er 1:

Just in case.

Suzanne Klein:

Right. So some of the most impor­tant things to con­sid­er when wear­ing safe­ty gog­gles is, how very crit­i­cal it is to pro­tect your vision. That’s a great look. You want to make sure that any time you are pour­ing chem­i­cals or there is a poten­tial for a splash sit­u­a­tion, that you always, always wear your safe­ty gog­gles. Any­time you’re doing clean­ing above your head, pres­sure wash­ing, any­thing like that, you always, always must wear your safe­ty goggles.

Speak­er 1:

That’s great. Yeah, our eyes are super, super sen­si­tive and real­ly impor­tant. Nobody wants to go with­out vision. So if you’re using a chem­i­cal, our chem­i­cals, in gen­er­al, they’re not that dan­ger­ous. But if they get in your eyes, it can real­ly do some dam­age. So we want to make sure we have some­thing to pro­tect our eyes from chem­i­cals. And again, like you say, if we’re work­ing over our head with chem­i­cals or objects, that’s very easy for those things to fall and get into our eyes. So I got to be hon­est, I look pret­ty ridicu­lous in these, so I think I’m going to use these instead. These are just my reg­u­lar old read­ing glass­es. How do you feel about that?

Suzanne Klein:

Well, unfor­tu­nate­ly you can­not wear those, because they don’t offer you any pro­tec­tion. They don’t cov­er the out­side, they’re not splash­er impact resistant.

Speak­er 1:

But I do have some real­ly big cool sun­glass­es. What about those?

Suzanne Klein:

Yeah, those are fash­ion­able but they also don’t offer you any real pro­tec­tion. So unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s the gor­geous goggles.

Speak­er 1:

That’s right. Safe­ty glass­es and some­times read­ing glass­es as well, don’t have that shat­ter­proof qual­i­ty. And so if some­thing were to fall and hit you in the eye, it could actu­al­ly do more dam­age than wear­ing noth­ing at all. So if you have a form of glass­es that you think is safe­ty approved, approach your man­ag­er and ask them and we can see about get­ting those approved and mak­ing sure you can wear those. All right, I guess onto the next thing.

Suzanne Klein:

All right.

Speak­er 3:

Safe­ty tip num­ber three. In order to pro­tect your eyes, safe­ty gog­gles must be worn if you’re han­dling any chem­i­cal or con­t­a­m­i­nant. This includes work that involves a splash­ing of flu­id or work­ing above your head, such as in high dust­ing sit­u­a­tions. Pre­scrip­tion glass­es, read­ing glass­es and sun­glass­es won’t pro­tect your eyes and they can’t be worn in place of safe­ty gog­gles. If you have your own pair of safe­ty gog­gles, you must pro­vide doc­u­men­ta­tion of their safe­ty approved qual­i­ties to your man­ag­er beforehand.

Speak­er 1:

All right, so what oth­er equip­ment do you want to talk about?

Suzanne Klein:

Actu­al­ly I’d like to talk about dust masks.

Speak­er 1:

Okay.

Suzanne Klein:

Can you tell me a lit­tle bit about them?

Speak­er 1:

I absolute­ly would love to. So this is the only type of dust mask that we real­ly should be wear­ing at the Budd Group. If we’re in a sit­u­a­tion where there’s a harm­ful chem­i­cal in the air or maybe a harm­ful dust in the air that requires us to wear a res­pi­ra­tor, the man­ag­er would actu­al­ly know that and we have a whole process that’s sep­a­rate from this. So real­ly the point of wear­ing these, is if some­thing’s just agi­tat­ing you and you feel more com­fort­able wear­ing one. And so, there’s not a lot to it. All you need to do is, I like to peep, pre-pinch the nose a lit­tle bit and then just slip it on, pull it over, and then go ahead and pinch that nose to make sure that you’re get­ting a nice seal, and that’s all there is to it.

Speak­er 1:

Again, a dust mask like this is real­ly made for big par­ti­cles and dust and is not going to do a lot to keep out small par­ti­cles. So this is real­ly just to help with agi­ta­tion or maybe if you were doing some high dust­ing and you had some big stuff fall, you just don’t want to get any­thing in your mouth. That’s real­ly when we should be wear­ing stuff like this.

Suzanne Klein:

Excel­lent.

Speak­er 1:

All right. What’s next?

Speak­er 3:

Pro safe­ty tip num­ber four. If you’re con­cerned of any dust or large par­ti­cles in the air, dust masks are pro­vid­ed for any­one who wish­es to wear it. If there’s a harm­ful chem­i­cal or dust in the air that requires a more seri­ous mask, such as a res­pi­ra­tor, con­tact your man­ag­er. Dust masks won’t pro­tect you from small or harm­ful par­ti­cles. After you’ve placed the dust mask on your face, be sure to pinch the met­al nose strip to com­plete the seal of the mask.

Suzanne Klein:

Okay, so I do have one last thing.

Speak­er 1:

Okay.

Suzanne Klein:

Hear­ing pro­tec­tion. Should my employ­ees be using these?

Speak­er 1:

That is a great ques­tion. So as you know, here we’re doing main­te­nance and land­scap­ing work, and I would say it’s more impor­tant that those guys are wear­ing them. There are prob­a­bly cir­cum­stances where your folks might want to wear hear­ing pro­tec­tion. I would say the good rule of thumb is, if you feel like you should be wear­ing hear­ing pro­tec­tion, it’s total­ly okay to wear it. Hear­ing pro­tec­tion is great. What this does, what these things do is, they actu­al­ly reduce the deci­bels that your ears are hear­ing, okay. And so, that is going to pro­long your hear­ing. Our ears are only made to with­stand a cer­tain fre­quen­cy and a cer­tain lev­el of sound. A deci­bel is kind of mea­sur­ing the lev­el of sound. And these are going to silence it a lit­tle bit, as every­body knows, because they worn these things, they know that it gets a lit­tle bit quieter.

Speak­er 1:

And so, any­time we’re doing some­thing that has a long, espe­cial­ly a long, loud, monot­o­nous sound or quick bursts of sound, that’s when we want to make sure we’re wear­ing earplugs. So if we’re using a real­ly loud vac­u­um, maybe we would want to wear it then. Our land­scap­ers want to make sure they’re wear­ing it when they’re using pret­ty much any of the equip­ment that they use and it’s going to def­i­nite­ly help pro­long their hear­ing. Our hear­ing is some­thing that’s a lit­tle less like our vision, for instance. Your vision, if you get some­thing in your eye, all of a sud­den, you may not be able to see any­more. But our hear­ing is, slow­ly over time, after expos­ing it to loud nois­es for long peri­ods of time, it can start to fade and we can start to lose some of that hear­ing abil­i­ty. So I think these are a great solu­tion for our team.

Speak­er 1:

Now I will say, some­times our folks wear these and they’re not doing much good, because they just kind of stick them in like this and they kind of have a Shrek look going and they just have them stick­ing out. And that’s not real­ly doing any­thing, I can hear every­thing exact­ly the same as I could with these.

Speak­er 1:

So what we want to do, is we want to make sure we roll them up real­ly tight, and then we’re just going to gen­tly place it in our ears. We’re not going to shove it down in there, but when you roll it up, it’ll allow them to go down in the ears and expand. Even as I’m talk­ing now, every­thing’s start­ing to-

Suzanne Klein:

Every­thing’s got­ten quiet.

Speak­er 1:

Get a lit­tle bit qui­eter. That’s right. Some­times peo­ple starts talk­ing real­ly loud when they have them in too and that’s okay.

Speak­er 1:

So that’s how we want to wear them. A big ques­tion we get about these is, well, what if my employ­ees want to wear ear­buds or music. And I would say this def­i­nite­ly affects your employees.

Suzanne Klein:

Yes.

Speak­er 1:

So even if we’re not requir­ing them to wear earplugs, we do not want them wear­ing ear­buds all day. It’s actu­al­ly bad for their ears, because just like lis­ten­ing to a lawn­mow­er or a blow­er or some­thing like that, as a long expo­sure to sound, so is lis­ten­ing to your favorite band all day long while you work. So real­ly impor­tant that we don’t have ear­buds in. They’re cer­tain­ly not a replace­ment and they can even make things worse. So that’s ear­buds. I think that that cov­ers every­thing we had to cov­er. So-

Suzanne Klein:

Excel­lent. Thank you so much.

Speak­er 1:

I real­ly appre­ci­ate you being here. I love see­ing your cam­pus. You guys are doing a won­der­ful job and I look for­ward to get­ting back here soon.

Suzanne Klein:

Great.

Speak­er 3:

Pro safe­ty tip num­ber five. Loud, pro­longed noise can be real­ly bad for your hear­ing. And hear­ing pro­tec­tion can help reduce the strengths of these sounds and nois­es, and they’re high­ly encour­aged to be worn. These are pro­vid­ed to any employ­ee who wish­es to wear them. To prop­er­ly apply the ear­buds, make sure you squish down the ear­bud just enough so that it fits down into your ear canal. Once they’ve been placed, they’ll expand, fill the canal, and help reduce the deci­bels of these fre­quen­cies. Wear­ing music head­phones and lis­ten­ing to music while work­ing can be dan­ger­ous as well, and are not a sub­sti­tute for prop­er ear pro­tec­tion. These are not per­mit­ted for work.

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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