Patrick W. Saltmarsh Tim Hunt, CHST Dir. of Envt’l, Safety Health and Safety Corporate Director W. J. L. Derenzo French Excavating Corp. Companies
Back to Basics It was a warm fall day, and the crew was light. A laborer was building out shelving in the storage box, and the foreman and I were out walking the site discussing the sequence of work to come. The general contractor had a couple of workers setting up their trailer. Other than that, those were the only people on site; or so we thought. It was a jobsite with the minimum personal protective equipment (PPE) of a hard hat, safety glasses, gloves, and high visibility vest. With the lack of “real work” happening onsite, it was very tempting to discard some of the PPE; after all, we were only going for a walk through the building. I’m glad I decided against that and wore all the required gear.
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s we walked through one of the overhead doors, we stopped to talk about the safety precautions we would take when the time came to take the door down. We took a few more steps into the building. I turned when I heard the foreman say my name. As I looked at him, his eyes were looking up and were wide. Just then, I felt a bang on my hard hat and felt something ricochet off my shoulder. Clanging to the ground next to us was a speed square. We looked up to see an aerial lift basket extended into the building through an opening around the corner, the worker apologizing for dropping his tool. I picked up the steel speed square from the ground, took my hard hat off, and saw the crack that came from the impact. My decision to wear all of the required site PPE may have saved my life that day. As we move into Spring, it feels that we are finally coming out of the COVID restrictions that we have been dealing with for the past few years. It feels like we are officially getting back to normal. With all of the changes and sacrifices that have been made recently, it’s a good time to reset ourselves and get back to the basics, getting back to the basics for personal protective equipment in particular. A typical jobsite has a minimum required set of PPE needed to work onsite. The PPE required usually includes; a hard hat, high-visibility vest/clothing, APRIL, 2022
gloves, and safety glasses. When we were forced to wear masks, many job sites and companies had to make concessions regarding safety glasses. The safety glasses were fogging up with masks on. Now that we are mask free, we need to get back to the habit of wearing safety glasses. Safety glasses must be appropriately rated; you can't just wear any pair of sunglasses. Check for the Z87 marking on the inside frame. Gloves are often an overlooked requirement. We have all heard excuses of why someone can’t wear gloves. However, a common first aid injury on jobcontinued on page 78
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