In
the hierarchy of safety precautions in the workplace, personal protective
equipment is your last line of defense to protect against potential
injury. Although there are four other
more effective guidelines to follow, elimination, substitution, engineer
controls, and administrative controls, personal protective equipment is still
very important after all those other precautions are taken as well as possible.
Personal
protective equipment or PPE for short is anything that you add or wear on your
person to provide a last line of defense to prevent injury. Depending on your work environment personal
protective equipment may be used to protect against physical hazards, heat,
cold, electrical arcs, airborne toxins, light, radiation, or others. No matter the application PPE is very
important to wear to keep you safe.
The
most common types of personal protective equipment are items such as safety
glasses, ear plugs, steel toed boots, gloves, hard hats, and masks. It is necessary for employers to provide
their employees with these items or anything other PPE items. Not only is it important to provide these
items, it is also important to stress and require everyone to wear them when
interacting with potentially dangerous equipment or dangerous environments.
While
working my summer internship my employer has strict guidelines in place about
personal protective equipment. Anyone on
the shop floor had to be wearing steel toes, long pants, and safety
glasses. Everyone held everyone else
responsible too, meaning if you saw someone not using their PPE you confronted
them nicely and reminded them to put it back on if they happened to forget. With this combination of employer and employee
responsibility to wear your PPE lead to everyone staying safe and uninjured.
Personal
protective equipment may be something that is slightly annoying or not as
comfortable as not wearing it, but if you are ever in a situation where you
avoided injury because of your PPE, you will be very thankful you had it
on. These situations can come out of
nowhere, something falling on your head or foot, shrapnel hitting your eye, or
a loud noise, that is why it is always important to have your PPE on and be
ready if anything were
to happen.
Thank you for your time and attention. Let’s make it safe this Monday!
Dale Bromenshenkel
Demand Generation Specialist, Lift’n Buddy, a Southworth Company
