Don't Be A Fall Protection Failure: Safety Tales Podcast Episode 1

Intro:

Dave and Bacon's Safety Tales, the only industrial safety podcast that brings you commonsense advice on job site safety, standards, regulations and industry best practices without putting you so sleep.

Fred:

Welcome everybody, Dave and Bacon's Safety Tales. This is the podcast. My name's Fred. I'm the semi-narrator host of this podcast. I'll be tossing over to Dave. He's going to be the meat and potatoes of the podcast.

Dave:

Yeah, I'm meat and potatoes. I mean, take a look at me. Come on, man.

Fred:

Yep. I'm more of the Lean Cuisine of the podcast, where he's more of the meat and the potatoes. I'm Fred, once again. I will be kind of the younger aspect of this, the lighter-weight aspect. We definitely have some goals of the podcast to hopefully entertain and education a little bit. I got about five years in the industry strictly selling safety products. Dave's got a little bit more vast history, so you'll kind of lean on him for some of the good stuff. Dave, why don't you introduce yourself?

Dave:

My name's Dave White. Obviously, been in the industry for over 20 years. Basically, we're kind of trying to solve the Midwest safety problems and the Unites States safety problems one at a time, really, thorough personal protective equipment because, obviously, if you need stuff that we offer, sell or advise on you cannot engineer outside hazard. The goal, again, is to kind of get everybody involved, answer questions that are coming up from our customers, and you, the listener, hopefully you get involved and let us know. Hopefully, we can kind of get towards a better work place because, again, the goal, everybody hates to get up to work, but it would really suck to expire there not go home and do the things that you love.

Fred:

I think we listen to some other podcast out there, they're probably a little bit drier than we're going to be where they maybe take a look at some statistics and some of the boring stuff that we'll probably gloss over. Might not get everything right, but hopefully we'll have a little bit of entertainment in there. Today, this is episode number two. We're going to dive into probably one of the biggest safety issues that contractors are facing today, and that's fall protection.

There are a lot of moving parts involved, and it can really be scary stuff. There's a ton of horror stories out there. Hopefully we'll be able to help you learn how to avoid becoming one of these stories. Every week we're going to try and use a story. We'll have it kind of based around a topic, but we'll kind of BS back and forth in and out of that topic, so hopefully you'll stick with us. Dave, why don't you go with your story for today?

Dave:

The story that kind of I grew up with in fall protection centered around tobacco barns. Obviously, I grew up in Kentucky as you can tell based on my accent. Obviously, I'm not your true Iowan or Midwesterner. I'm kind of from the Southeast, and tobacco is a big, big agricultural product down South. Tobacco is something that has a lot of manual processes in it, and what a lot of people don't realize is that the end product really ends up in a barn. Kind of the goal of what we're talking about today is kind of look backwards. When we talk about a tobacco barn, a tobacco barn is nothing more than any traditional barn that you would see, but they have rafters that are situated, and nothing's really tied down.

Tobacco, after you cut it goes, basically, to a tobacco stick, which is multiple pieces of the plant. Tobacco is a larger plant. A tobacco plant is probably about four and a half, five foot tall after you cut it, placing it on a stick, multiple plants per stick. You're talking about a little bit of weight that's then moved to the barn through a scaffold wagon. A scaffold wagon's nothing more than this metal pole truck that these tobacco sticks go on, and you move it to the tobacco barn.

That's where it gets real funny because we're talking about a barn, obviously, like I said, and we have to pass these sticks up. In the rafters we have poles that we're putting the sticks across that are not nailed down to anything. After I got in the industry I kind of laughed looking backwards. Most of the time we're trying to figure out how to do a PFAS, personal fall arrest system, which is a anchorage body-wear connecting device. All we basically did was use a piece of rope that we tied somewhere in the barn rafters. It was not uncommon to just kind of wrap it around your wrist, so when you fell you would at least kind of maybe pull your shoulder out versus actually going after something that's tested and engineered.

That's kind of the story looking backward is that wasn't too long ago. I was born in '74, so we're not talking ancient history with Romans and chariots running around. We're talking about I think everything was color TV, so we're talking color TV, and the fact that fall protection was nothing more than a rope to rafter to a wrist, and hopefully you didn't hit the ground.

Fred:

Tobacco barns, huh?

Dave:

Yep.

Fred:

All right.

Dave:

Most people don't realize there's multiple different types of tobacco and air-cured and fire-cured, but all my folks from Kentucky and Tennessee would recognize it.

Fred:

Yeah, I barely have any idea what you're talking about. I was listening. You kind of go back and forth and I was thinking, "Chlorophyll? More like borophyll." You don't know that? Billy Madison, no? Picking up on what I'm putting out?

Dave:

It didn't.

Fred:

All right, so you wanted to chat a little bit about why you may need your head examined if you're not wearing fall protection. Did you want to get into some of the risk factors?

Dave:

The biggest risk is what? Gravity. Being as you kind of adhered to earlier, being kind of a chubby guy-

Fred:

I'll say.

Dave:

... we're going to fall at same rates of speed, but when I hit, obviously, a different weight or mass ratio. I'm going to hit a little bit harder than you are.

Fred:

Plus, I'm super-athletic, so I always land on my feet.

Dave:

I wouldn't go super-athletic. Kind of a cheesy-looking white guy.

Fred:

Agree to disagree.

Dave:

You could probably out jump me a little bit.

Fred:

Dave, you had mentioned to me earlier that leading edge was really kind of a new thing that was happening with, really, fall protection as a whole, but I think specifically talking a lot about the retractables and some of that stuff. First of all, what is leading edge specific equipment? What is a leading edge? We need to start, what is a leading edge, and then what specific equipment?

Dave:

Fred, people really try to over-think when they look at the word leading edge. A leading edge is I walk up to a 90 degree angle, and the other side of the angle is going straight towards the Earth. If I'm walking on a roof, and I get to the edge of the roof, I'm working on a leading edge. It may be a floor above another floor, and I walk to the edge of that, and I can see down, I looking at a leading edge. Again, edge being that I'm stepping over something that if I step over that, gravity is going to take me crashing to my death.

Leading edge in fall protection is a little different because a lot of times when we're looking at combating falls we're looking at a personal fall arrest system, which is, again, a component-driven system. When we say, "What are the components?" We think of, A, B, C and D. A, being our anchorage. Anchorage is what, how to say, we're kind of tethering to to make sure that we don't fall. If I'm thinking about a woman at the fair, and her kid running around that has one of those dog collar, it's usually like a monkey backpack with a string that's tied to the mother.

Fred:

Yeah, we've got one of those, giraffe with a little thing on it, never had to use it fortunately, but you see the kid.

Dave:

You know what I'm saying, but at that point in time mom becomes, A, the anchorage point. B is the little monkey or what did you say, the-

Fred:

Giraffe.

Dave:

The giraffe, so B being the body wear, is the giraffe, and C being the connecting device, is, obviously, the string from the giraffe backpack back to mom. As the child runs off, kind of hits the end of it, so personal fall arrest system, PFAS. A,B,C would be giraffe, mother, and string between giraffe and mother.

Fred:

Okay, but what you were saying a little bit was like, specifically to leading edge, you said 90 degree angle, that's not necessarily the case, correct? A roof doesn't have to be at a 90 degree angle when you fall off.

Dave:

That doesn't necessarily, but where it's different is a lot of times when we're talking about falls we want the anchor point to be directly above us if at all possible. Well, in a leading edge situation there's typically nothing over the top of us unless we get a skyhook, or the guy that makes the Tesla comes out with a drone that can become an anchor point that will float above us. Again, we have no place to put the anchor point that is above where the dorsal D-ring or in case of the giraffe back thing it's between the shoulder blades. We can't put the anchor point above that. The anchor point being at typically feet or below our dorsal-D is where that ends up being.

Fred:

Would that always be the case, though? If you had the anchor above you, but you're working with, say, a 30 foot retractable, and you're at the extent and you still can come near a leading edge, even if it's above you you would still need some-

Dave:

Yes, theoretically, point made is, yes, the anchor point could be above your dorsal-D, and you could, say, have an SRL where I'm walking out 10 paces, and the leading edge occurs, and I could go over the "right angle" and start to fall there.

Fred:

Are you still seeing, I know I see a lot of times you still drive by and see roofers up there working, two, three men applications that they're working. Nobody's wearing a harness, nobody's wearing anything. They're up there doing shingles just to get the job done quickly. Has there really been a crackdown kind of on what those guys have to do, or is that something that people kind of stay away from?

Dave:

Part of it gets into what's the pitch of the roof? OSHA's come out a number of times and tried to a "residential roof standard", but in residential roofing it's-

Fred:

Still the wild west still a little bit?

Dave:

Yeah, it's way-wild west, and, unfortunately, it's how a lot of people are getting hurt because your typical residential roof with asphalt shingles with enough pitch, you go off the edge of it, yeah, it's not really that high, but I'm pretty sure that if I fell 12, 15 feet I'm not going to fair too well.

Fred:

No. I installed satellite dishes for a summer. This is six, seven years ago, and we weren't wearing anything when we got up there. You climb up to a ladder onto someone's, basically, mansion, install their satellite dish two feet from their gutter. It would have taken one little trip on my shoelace.

Dave:

You're seeing a lot of the commercial roof installers where a lot of these, we'll say, installers of residential roofs are not large conglomerate companies. You'll see more satellite dishes are being put on the ground because the installers of satellite dishes aren't able to climb ladders and get on a roof because there's no anchor point.

Fred:

They're not allowing them to do that?

Dave:

You're seeing a lot of them that will not get on the roof because there's no anchor point, there's no way for them to get on the roof and install that. You'll see more and more people are pouring little small pads on the side of houses and pointing them up versus mounting them on the rooftop.

Fred:

Yeah, that was the one thing they always would tell us is you have to have line-of-sight, so the roof was a lot the easiest spot to get line-of-sight when there's a shit-ton of trees that are blocking their way.

Dave:

Absolutely, but who wants a shitty-

Fred:

Satellite dish in their yard?

Dave:

Yeah.

Fred:

That their kids can bang the lawnmower into when they're going by.

Dave:

It's ludicrous, but you'll continue to see that. The problem is there's a hundred and one products that the residential customer can have installed when he's building the house or the next time he has the roof replaced which would then give that person the ability to utilize an anchor point, but that's probably not going to happen.

Fred:

That reminds me. One of the guys I worked with, they called him the Witz. I think it was his last name. Anyway, he was The Witz. There would be all pole mounts or all side mounts to the house. He made you look like a young Tom Hanks. He was a big boy. He had to have a special ladder probably-

Dave:

It wasn't like Tom Hanks, like Castaway at the end of it.

Fred:

... custom made. No, more of a Danny DeVito build.

Dave:

Okay, right on. I'm taller than Danny DeVito.

Fred:

Yeah, you're taller. He was a short, husky boy. He's like, "Big boys don't get up that high off the ground." He'd get that ladder. He'd get about four or feet on the ground. You'd go by a lot of his jobs that he did when he installed the satellite dish, and you'd be like, "Why is that satellite dish sticking like 8 feet out of the side of that guy's house, and not on the roof when there's an obviously spot you could put it on the roof?" You'd be like, "Who did this job? The Witz."

Dave:

The Witz.

Fred:

"The Witz for sure did this job." What do you got for some tips on how to wear fall protection the correct way? What do you think?

Dave:

Again, when you talk about fall protection it's a system that's designed. It gets into-

Fred:

Because we see it a ton the wrong way.

Dave:

Oh, yeah. It's kind of the first thing is your body wear. You usually show up to a site and you walk around, and easily you're laughing real quickly because, number one, you got the kind of pants on the ground thug, "I'm wearing harness thug-right," and it's hanging down. The first thing is typically the leg straps is the biggest issue. The leg straps should be kind of worn tight. Not so tight that you're constricting, but a couple of fingers in between the-

Fred:

[inaudible 00:17:18]

Dave:

... webbing there. The chest strap, you should be able to roll your fist in it, but it should be, again snug and to the body. Just like you shouldn't wear a harness over a bunch of clothing because, again, it's a system that's designed and tested to limit fall arresting forces, the very specific amounts as related to ANSI or OSHA.

Fred:

Isn't that something that, like, I know we see it a lot with winter coats, that a guy will have on a big, bulky parka. His harness is over on the top of it, and they'll actually request, "Oh, I need a 2XL harness for winter instead of my XL harness that I normally wear." We're like, "That's a major no-no."

Dave:

Yeah, it's a no-no because, again, when you fall it creates force, and that force where it hits is, again, body wear is designed to put that fall arresting force kind of down into larger muscle masses, meaning your glutes and your quads and kind of your crotch area a better way to put it.

Fred:

Ass too, right?

Dave:

Yeah, that's glutes. Sorry, I mean-

Fred:

Medial term for ass, got it.

Dave:

Yeah, so you're trying to put a lot of that fall arresting force in those larger areas. The problem is, is the bigger shock that you have any time your body experiences a shock it's almost a bruising effect. It causes blood to want to run there, and big problem, femoral artery, kind of runs beside your crotch. Then you're putting a lot of arresting forces on there, which then it leads to a whole different set of issues, whether it's a nine dollar word static intolerance, which is, basically ... Or, excuse me, orthostatic intolerance, which is suspension trauma, is the cheapened word.

Fred:

I don't like any pressure on my crotch that isn't there deliberately.

Dave:

That's a double-edged sword, but in that situation it's not the edge of the sword that you would probably prefer to have.

Fred:

Right. What about relief straps as a way to do it? I know I had on there that we'd give a tip for saving yourself with those relief straps that you got. What's your opinion on those?

Dave:

The rule of thumb is most people-

Fred:

Maybe explain what a relief strap is.

Dave:

A relief strap is-

Fred:

I don't know if that's something that everybody knows or not.

Dave:

Different brands kind of have different configurations for them. A relief strap is basically something that attaches to the harness that gives you the ability to step into, and then through pressure kind of stand up and, again, as we talked about that femoral artery, gives it the ability to kind of move blood around.

Fred:

What kind of artery was that?

Dave:

Femoral.

Fred:

Femoral. Got it.

Dave:

Yeah, the artery that goes by the femur, I guess. I'm by no means a scientist. It gets into standing up and taking pressure off of the straps. You've fallen, if you've fallen on a six foot lanyard, you're about 10, 12 feet from where you started out. You've hit, you're probably seeing a little bit of stars. It's not like you got hit by a car, but there's some force there. You need to give yourself some relief because, like we said, kind of that bruising effect comes in, meaning blood rushing to there. You're freaked-out, you've fallen. Now you have the fact that you have a bonafide tourniquet on your crotch. You need to kind of do something to kind of give yourself a little break there because your heart starts to kind of work a little bit harder because, again, blood's rushing to the wrong place. You have the tourniquet holding blood there. Let's say I'm kind of a doughy, gelatinous guy, I'm a little bit bigger than I should be.

Fred:

I'll say.

Dave:

Well, I mean, too may buffets and probably a bit towards the Bud Light, towards the Budweiser, but things are what they are. With that said ...

Fred:

Really, it's even more important for those situations where there's a good chance rescue's not coming any time soon.

Dave:

Who the hell has a good rescue program? You know as well as I do, we walk into place after place and we sell them all [crosstalk 00:22:24].

Fred:

"Somebody call 911!"

Dave:

Yeah, so you got somebody running through yelling, and you go, "Well, what's the response time?" A lot of times these places we're calling on are in the middle of a corn field 27 corn fields from the nearest city. Who in the hell's going to figure that out? Not to mention, the person that responds, they've never been there, so the first thing they're going to do is they're going to go, "Well, where's the guy at?" Trot, trot, trot, "Oh, man, we're going to have to figure out how to get him down."

Fred:

"We got to call backup for this one."

Dave:

Yeah, so all of a sudden they're like, "Oh, we can't get a helicopter in here to get him out. We don't have a ladder that tall." The whole time the guy's sitting there. It's buys a little bit of time.

Fred:

That can be 15 minutes, that's easy, but some guys are up there, what, 30 minutes, an hour?

Dave:

Can be.

Fred:

That can turn into a real disaster.

Dave:

Well, you sit there and you like at somebody like my, again, approaching my mid-40s, a little heavier than I should be. Probably should have laid off the salt this morning.

Fred:

You're looking a little puffy.

Dave:

Oh, yeah, I'm telling you. Yeah, right? A little doughy, as I like to put it.

Fred:

Okay. Do you want to do your terrible-ending fall protection story? You want to go with it? We can always edit it out if we need to.

Dave:

We talk about fall protection all the time. A lot of times it comes with these horror stories that people tell. The worst story that I ever heard, and this is 20 years talking to people about fall protection, it starts with, "So the guy falls." This one is one where he falls in an elevator, and he gets caught in the counterweights. As I sat there listening to this I'm almost distraught like-

Fred:

We're talking no fall protection here in this circumstance?

Dave:

Fall protection, but when he fell somehow he ended up falling into the counterweight system of an elevator. He's caught up within this, and somehow they have to do a rescue. Whether this story is true or not, I don't know, but the guy had me literally, I was completely bought-in.

Fred:

Right, hook, line and sinker?

Dave:

Yeah, so I was literally just sitting there-

Fred:

This is an episode of Law and Order.

Dave:

... waiting for the end. They got him caught in the counterweight system, so they get him rigged up. They've got him finally released from the counterweight system. Well, in rescue one of the lines is, "Never cut a rope," well, they cut a rope. They accidentally cut the wrong one. He goes from being rescued to falling the rest of the way down the elevator shaft. At the bottom of the elevator shaft, crashed through that, ends up in a pool that was below that elevator shaft, and drowns. The worst fall that I ever heard, he didn't die necessarily from the fall. He basically died from asphyxiation through drowning.

Fred:

Jesus Christ. They're watching him go down. They're looking at him, "Oh, no." It's like a series of-

Dave:

It's like how many times can you say no when somebody dies? "No. Oh, we got him. No."

Fred:

They're like all of a sudden he gets caught up, and they're like, "Oh, god. Let's get him rescued." They rescue him. Then all of a sudden they're like, "All right, cut him free. Cut him free. Oh, no we cut the wrong rope." Now he's going down, he hits the ceiling. "Oh, thank god, the ceiling will stop him," straight through the ceiling, "Oh, he's going to land in the water. Thank ... Oh, he drowned. Now, he's no longer with us." That's terrible.

Dave:

You sit there and you go, "This stuff happens," whether that's a true or false story. You hear about this stuff happening every day, and the bad thing is there's probably a lot of truth to it in the fact that there were a lot of mistakes made. The mistakes could have been negated whether it was through proper use of equipment, controls, a good rescue plan. In that bad situation there's a number of ways there could have been a good outcome.

Fred:

And still shit can happen, like, they cut the wrong rope.

Dave:

Oh, yeah, you got that, but, again, that becomes bad training, bad practice. Sometimes we can set out with the goals of absolute glory and safety. I'm going to march off in the morning. I'm marching back home, and at the end of the day, well, that still didn't work out very well.

Fred:

Good story. All right, now we're going to move on. We're going to do our favorite segment called Dumb Ass of the week.

Speaker 4:

It's the Dumb Ass of the Week.

Fred:

All right, so fictional character. This guy doesn't actually exist. He might exist, but we at least changed his name. Let's call this-

Dave:

Trust me, he exists.

Fred:

Yeah, but Larry, "Larry", we're going to call this guy, Larry-

Dave:

Larry's a dumb ass.

Fred:

... does not exist, but this guy definitely exists. All right, so first off, what did Larry do?

Dave:

What did Larry do? Larry is one of these guys that sits there and has decided that he doesn't like personal protective equipment.

Fred:

Why?

Dave:

Well, he's one of these dumb asses that, again, at some point in time he actually utilized the equipment. Utilizing the equipment-

Fred:

Good for Larry, good for Larry.

Dave:

Yeah, but utilizing the equipment he didn't have the exact experience that he wanted. This is, again, sitting at a conference at some point in time during my exposure to all this stuff, talking to this guy, he's like, "Yep, fall protection, not wearing that stuff anymore." I kind of looked at him and I go-

Fred:

"Larry, why not?"

Dave:

Yeah, basically. He's like, "Well, it was probably about 10 years ago had fall protection on, and I was super-mad." I'm like, "Oh, had a swing-fall incident, huh?" "Yep, never wear that stuff again." I'm like, "So, well, what happened" "Well, we were working about 130 foot, and I went to fall, and anchor point wasn't right. I hit, and it kind of messed up my shoulder, and I still got a problem with my shoulder. That fall protection stuff, that's bull shit." I'm like, "Well, you said that you were like up over 100 foot?"

Fred:

Yeah, what's the alternative?

Dave:

He's like, "Yeah, but, man, crashing into that, that's crap."

Fred:

Jesus, Larry.

Dave:

Yeah, "So, when they try to put me into that I don't want that to happen anymore, so I just don't do that." Literally, as unbelievable as that sounds, I sat there and witnessed that. This guy adamant that the fact that he didn't fall to his death, he was not going to wear fall protection anymore based on that, so Larry is a dumb ass.

Fred:

I'll say it, Larry is a dumb ass. Normally, we try to wrap this us with, "What should Larry have done differently?" But in this case it's a little-

Dave:

There is stuff that Larry could have done differently, and part of it is let's go back into when we were talking about fall protection, part of it is that anchor point. Obviously, Larry, the dumb ass, did not have his anchor point situated where it should have been. Again, in a perfect world an anchor point is directly above our heads, so when we fall, we fall down until the connecting device stops us. Whether that's an SRL or whether it's a lanyard, it basically slows us down or stop us before we hit the grade below. Well, obviously, Larry did not pay attention to the fact that he had gone off of center. Again, so if an anchor point's directly above us, and we walk 30 feet to the right, and then we fall over that edge, well, we're going to fall directly down, but gravity is going to bring us back towards that anchor point 30 feet back, so we're swinging, we're super-manning.

Fred:

But doesn't sometimes the work is going to dictate that they're working 30 feet out, or is there a solution for something that they should be doing? Even if it's 15 feet out, if it's 10 feet out, you're still going to be able to get some swing fall.

Dave:

Anytime you're off center you're going to have swing fall. Again, is the anchor point 10 feet above you, directly above you? Again, that's all going to change your calculations of what the actual swing is. The other one, Larry the dumb ass should have realized is, "Hey, I'm swinging back towards a concrete wall." You really got to think about if I were to fall and I'm going to have swing fall is there a meat grinding machine to my left that if I fall I'm going into it? You really should pay attention to shit like that.

Fred:

Yeah, I'm trying to think of what it is, oh, He-Man, in the movie He-Man with Dolph Lundgren. You don't remember that?

Dave:

[crosstalk 00:32:48].

Fred:

You know Dolph Lundgren at least?

Dave:

Yeah, I remember Dolph.

Fred:

All right, well Dolph Lundgren was He-Man. They did like a-

Dave:

He's the same bad like Rocky character wasn't he?

Fred:

Right, Ivan Drago, "I will break you."

Dave:

Yeah, there you go.

Fred:

Dolph Lundgren was He-Man. He was the star. He was actually He-Man. It's like a live-action He-Man.

Dave:

He looked like he'd be a small He-Man.

Fred:

Dolph Lundgren? He's a monster. Don't you remember Stallone versus Dolph Lundgren? That was the whole thing was like he's two feet taller.

Dave:

Yeah, I know, "I will break you," but-

Fred:

Oh, he's a monster.

Dave:

... by the power of Grayskull I remember that as a cartoon, he was like a crazy-big guy.

Fred:

But this is a human. They had to find some human to portray He-Man.

Dave:

Okay, more after the cartoon character.

Fred:

Yeah, there's usually human humans.

Dave:

Human human?

Fred:

He's actually a human.

Dave:

Homosapien.

Fred:

Yeah, homosapien, but, no, Dolph Lundgren is a monster. I'll show you some shirtless pics I have saved on my phone.

Dave:

You have more than one.

Fred:

If you would like to see some shirtless, muscular Dolph Lundgren, what a beefcake. Anyways, so at the very end of He-Man, spoiler alert, this thing came out in like 1987, so if you haven't seen it yet, your time's passed. I'll spoil it for you. He kicks Skeletor off the ledge, and Skeletor is all of a sudden falling backwards moving his arms and his legs in that real dramatic fashion going, "Ahhh," into like this pit of lava. That leads me to believe you might be swinging, but you might swing into Skeletors's pit of lava. You got to be looking out for that shit.

Dave:

Meat grinder, pit of lava, I got you.

Fred:

Same difference. I like to crowbar-in my man crushes on six year old Dolph Lundgren.

Dave:

There you go.

Fred:

Anyways, so Larry could have done some things differently, but, in the end, Larry's a dumb ass.

Dave:

Correct.

Fred:

All right, fair enough. What do we got? This week let's comb through some email. On a weekly basis we are going to try and answer some questions. If you'd like to reach out to me it's just Fred@quadcitysafety.com. Just put podcast in the subject of the email. You can reach out on our Facebook page @QuadCitySafety, Twitter, LinkedIn, it's all @QuadCitySafety, if you want to use the #SafetyTales. The podcast once again is Dave and Bacon's Safety Tales. I guess we didn't really explain who Bacon was. Bacon is our mascot.

Dave:

He's our pig.

Fred:

He's our pig, so save you some bacon.

Dave:

Don't you have like a Myspace page or something like that?

Fred:

With my eight friends?

Dave:

Yeah, something like that.

Fred:

I had a Myspace page. Did you have a Myspace page?

Dave:

Never had a Myspace page.

Fred:

You didn't?

Dave:

No.

Fred:

The cool thing about Myspace, and when none of these new social media apps have kind of captured, was not only did you have like your top-eight so you could tell everyone who your best-

Dave:

Your top-eight.

Fred:

That's what it was, like, your best eight friends. It's like your girl better be number one.

Dave:

Then your bros.

Fred:

Your guy could be number one, and then it's your best next like seven bros after that. If you had another girl in there, then girl number one's going to be pretty skeptical.

Dave:

It had to be ho's before bros.

Fred:

It had to be ho before bros, but then it had to be bros before other ho's.

Dave:

Okay, I got it.

Fred:

That was the thing. It'd be like so my now wife at the time was my girlfriend, she'd be number on in my top-eight. You click on all their profiles. You add your other homies to your top-eight. You get some jealousy of, "Why am I not in your top-eight, man? I thought we were friends. I thought we were close."

Dave:

I thought Facebook was complicated.

Fred:

No, Myspace was probably a little bit simpler. It just had a wall. It didn't have all the advertisement and all that type of stuff that are going into it, like all the ads. People weren't sharing all that stuff. It was literally like, "Hey, Marcie. What's going on? How you doing Marcie?"

Dave:

Oh, so it was like the old lady in that one commercial where it was like-

Fred:

You DTF?

Dave:

"This is all my wall."

Fred:

Yes.

Dave:

"That's not how that works."

Fred:

"That's not how any of this works." But the coolest aspect that I thought about Myspace was that you could have your song. It was like a song, so all of a sudden you'd click.

Dave:

Like your WWE entry music or something like that?

Fred:

It could be that, or you're like a fighter. I click Fred's profile, and all of a sudden Gin and Juice comes on.

Dave:

That was yours, huh?

Fred:

I don't remember what mine was. I had some varying one. This was like-

Dave:

Laid back.

Fred:

... 15 years ago-ish. Maybe not quite that long ago.

Dave:

15?

Fred:

Yeah, I feel like I was early 20s in that, so it's changed a little bit. Anyways, back into it, so email, reach out to us. You can use a hashtag if you want to Safety Tales. Once again, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.

Dave:

Our fax number is 563-445-2170.

Fred:

If you fax us.

Dave:

Yeah, you can fax Bacon. Bacon loves getting a fax.

Fred:

Oh, for god's sakes don't fax us. Otherwise some sales person will be rushing in there to see what hot thing came across on the fax machine today that I can follow up on-

Dave:

Right on.

Fred:

... because it's 2005. Anyways, back to emails. So, emails, "Dave, is a dump bottle good enough for my eye wash system?" Or, eyewash program, I guess it says, sorry.

Dave:

Really, no. It seems like everywhere you go they have these one and two bottle dump station. It'll be a 16 ounce, it'll be a 32 ounce bottle. The problem is when you actually kind of dig into the standards, is you got to have a continuous means. Not often do you get something in your eye to where if you're really worried about whether it's particulate or chemical or whatever you're around, usually it'd be like, "Why would you not just take a bottle of bottled water and just kind of squirt it on your face? Why wouldn't that be good enough?"

Well, one is because there's not a long enough flow. Long enough flow meaning under standard you need a continuous flow for 15 minutes. Again, that's to flush whether it's in the eyes or on the skin. If you were around chemicals, and let's say it got into your eye, but it was all over your skin, just 16 ounces is probably going to dilute it a little bit, but you're going to kind of still be in pain, and you're going to be running around and probably fall. The answer is really no. When we start digging into that whole eyewash question it becomes, well, where is what's hurting us at? Because we need to locate that eyewash. There's rules of thumb of five second commute, no more than 50 feet to get to it.

It depends where your water source is because sometimes you can plumb. If you have pipes you can plumb a eyewash station, or not necessarily an eyewash, or it can be an eyewash and a shower station. Let's say you're dispensing chemicals, and you're 20 feet from a water source. You can plumb, you can use just your regular system to supply that. If you're outside of where that water source is they have a lot of gravity-fed systems, which can either take cartridges or you can put water with an additive that keeps the water from turning to oil. You'll pee water at the golf course. You go to the golf course and they have the blue water that kind of keeps everything smelling fresh and good.

Fred:

Or that stuff that you recycle your ball in?

Dave:

Yeah, just to keep it from stinking or whatever because, again, we're putting that into our eyes and kind of washing off with that. They make those additive type systems, gravity-fed. We have one from Speakman that we love. You just basically fill it up with water, add your additive, and you have an eyewash that is compliant.

Fred:

Fair enough. All right. Question two, "Dave, somebody told me that you're not supposed to use sunscreen or bug spray in conjunction with FR clothing. What you think?"

Dave:

Well, FR clothing, again, FR whether you say flame resistant, flame retardant, it doesn't matter what the hell it is, the key word's flame. When we talk about bug spray, most bug spray will either be dispensed with some level of an aerosol, which is flammable. Any dumb ass kid that's over the age of 12 and has had a cigarette lighter and the can of bug spray, Off, hairspray, whatever it is, has kind of proven that, "Oh, we have a flame and we have fuel, and if we put it together it creates more flame."

Fred:

Got you.

Dave:

Obviously, not really a good thing. A lot of your bug sprays are like DEET. DEET is the only proven thing that I've read that will keep mosquitoes from biting you.

Fred:

Not vanilla?

Dave:

Everybody's got their stupid shit that they'll-

Fred:

Not lemon juice, or whatever it is?

Dave:

Lemon juice, Skin So Soft, Vanilla. Come on, no. In a lab DEET, which is ethanol and diethyltoluamide is, obviously, very, again, just like the kid with his lighter, break DEET out and spray it. It's pretty cool, large flames, large flames.

Fred:

This isn't just bro science?

Dave:

No, that's not just bro science. So, basically, why would you put something that is a propellant or something that's flammable onto a garment that is meant to withstand flames? Because now you're going to have, probably not the end of the world, but you're putting something that's going to drive fire that's already created in something that you're trying to protect yourself against. Sun screen also is something that it's usually got some level of whether it's a natural oil base, is it's going to something in there can impregnate into the cloth or those FR materials and cause them to burn more. There are multiple products out there, and whether it is a Sun X product, and most of them will denote that you can use them with FR clothes.

Fred:

Right, that's something that they're going to let you know. They're pretty proud of their product because it probably cost more, but they're pretty proud of their product.

Dave:

Yeah, it's going to cost more.

Fred:

This works for FR clothing.

Dave:

But at least daddy's not going to come home with third degree burns. That's kind of a big, again, the whole goal of this whole show is to make sure that daddy don't come home with third degree burns.

Fred:

Yeah, especially pasty guys like me, you end up having to put that sunscreen on pretty often.

Dave:

Your little baby man beard would not do real well against that.

Fred:

Nope, it's pretty cute. All right, third question, "Can I tie-off at my feet?"

Dave:

Absolutely, you can do whatever the hell you want on this planet. The problem is is there's laws, regulations and situations. Again, we try to go home. Yes, you can tie-off at your feet, but it gets into all this the world's full of a lot rules, a bit more than 10 commandments 50 thousand years ago. Now since the Edict of Nantes and all of our constitutional congresses we have a lot of rules and regulations, and one of them gets into ANSI verses OSHA. When we get into fall arresting forces one would say, "1800 pounds," and the next guy says, "900 pounds." Then everybody goes, "So, am I compliant?" We look at the and go, "You want to be ANSI or OSHA compliant?" "I'd like to be OSHA compliant." "Well, you need to be OSHA compliant you need to be 1800 pounds." "Well, is it ANSI compliant?" "No, you're not ANSI compliant because that needs to be 900 pounds."

It's one of these paradoxical things that comes back and forth. At the end of the day it depends on which god you pray to, ANSI or OSHA as to whether it's compliant because when you're tying off at our feet we're creating fall distances, which create larger arresting forces. The short answer, yes you can, but, that's a conjunction, but and or and yet, those are conjunctions. That means that, yeah, you can, but, so there's a caveat.

Fred:

Got you.

Dave:

There's something tied to that, is that you need to make sure that the system is designed to deal with those arresting forces.

Fred:

Okay, but they do make products that you're able to tie-off at your feet.

Dave:

Yes, they do. Yeah, they make-

Fred:

But that's not an ideal.

Dave:

It's not an ideal situation. Again, any time we can have an anchor point would like it to be at our dorsal D-ring and directly above.

Fred:

Okay, what's special about those types of products? What makes a lanyard okay that you can tie-off at your feet versus one that you can't tie off at your feet? What do they do? So, like those products-

Dave:

Again, it gets into those arresting forces. It's limiting the amount of force, like, when we talked about the force that's going to our crotch, it's limiting that force to the crotch, or just kind of says the length that we're falling, the weight that we are, we are going towards a certain speed. A shock absorbing lanyard has a shock pack that then when it deploys it absorbs energy. That energy is slowing us down. It's kind of like going back to the whole carnival thing, you watch that little kid starting to run towards the ice cream cones. He's tied to mom, has a string with no shock absorber, has his little bear outfit on. All of a sudden he just locks up, boom.

Fred:

Oh, god. When we had our great dane, she'd be on a tie-out in the backyard.

Dave:

Oh, boy.

Fred:

She see a squirrel or a rabbit or something like that, and she would take off. Eventually, there was no shock pack, just her neck would stay, and her body would go.

Dave:

Yeah, and so that's the whole thing is when we're talking about tying-off at our feet, the shock absorber is built to absorb more force. The complex thing about that is if we ever into fall distances and talking about that is typically the shock pack is going to deploy. Your typical shock pack on a regular six foot lanyard is three and a half foot, it's longer than three and a half foot. You just need to make sure that you account that so you don't just slow down just enough before you hit the ground.

Fred:

Cool. I know fall protection's really, from knowing you long enough, fall protection is one of your favorite topics to speak on just because there's so many moving parts, so much stuff that happens.

Dave:

It's interesting. Got to keep awake.

Fred:

Yeah, stuff's changing. Everyone's got a different application, so it's cool to look at.

Dave:

You sit there and you go, "We have 1910, which is general industry. We have 1926, which is construction." There's all kinds of different thought processes and ways that people do stuff that it's an art and a science. There's science between if I fall I'm going to speed up towards the Earth, and how am I going to stop before I hit?

Fred:

What was that, 1910, 1926?

Dave:

Yeah, that's the-

Fred:

We're all in the [inaudible 00:50:01].

Dave:

... shit that we try not to [crosstalk 00:50:02]. Boring.

Fred:

All right, quick, favorite songs about falling. What you got? You got anything that comes to mind?

Dave:

How about some Tom Petty?

Fred:

"Because I'm free, free falling."

Dave:

You got to love some classic rock, man.

Fred:

What about Alicia Keys?

Dave:

I don't even know who Alicia Keys is.

Fred:

You don't?

Dave:

No.

Fred:

She's the one that sings, "I keep on falling-"

Dave:

Oh, my god.

Fred:

"... in love with you." You know Life House? This took me back to like-

Dave:

Life House?

Fred:

Yeah. Do you know Life House?

Dave:

Wow. Yeah.

Fred:

It took me back to like college age. They had the song, "I'm falling even more in love with you."

Dave:

"With you." Yeah.

Fred:

All right, that was a good one. How about your boy Johnny Cash?

Dave:

That was probably with your first girlfriend.

Fred:

Oh, that was girlfriend number one. I had a buddy that I'm pretty sure that song will still make him tear up a little bit. That was like him and a girl's song that broke up with him, that broke his heart, one of those.

Dave:

Oh, okay. Was that like his Myspace shit?

Fred:

Yeah, he probably played that on Myspace for weeks afterwards. That does lead me to, first, how about Johnny Cash?

Dave:

"I fell into a burning ring of fire."

Fred:

Yep, that's a good one.

Dave:

Yeah, gotta love him.

Fred:

Anyways, back to the story about girl on Myspace. I had a buddy, he had a girlfriend. The Aerosmith song, that was "I don't want to miss a thing" from Armageddon would come on, and that was him and his girl's song. Was that, "And I don't want to miss a thing."

Dave:

Oh, yeah, bad Aerosmith.

Fred:

Terrible, like, newer Aerosmith, but, anyways, we had a Superbowl party, and Aerosmith performed at the halftime show. This girl was there that had broke up with him, and he was there at the same Superbowl party. Aerosmith was performing the halftime show, and they started performing that song. He just was like Patrick Ewing at the free throw line, sitting there clinching, like, "You poor bastard," heartbroken.

All right, that's enough of that. That's it for us today. That was episode one. I think we were able to have some fun, but, really, this is pretty super-serious shit. We really appreciate you listening. As your reward for sticking it out with us next week we'll be back with more safety stories.

Dave:

We're going to do another one.

Fred:

We'll do a third one.

Dave:

The tres.

Fred:

If you can't wait for more of Dave and Bacon's Safety Tales you can visit the Quad City Safety blog on quadcitysafety.com, or hit us on any of our social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, however you want to reach us, we'll be there for you. Please leave us comments, questions, any feedback on fall protection or any other safety issue. Really, whatever route works for you. Let's shine some light on this subject so we can avoid these stories that end in tragedy.

When I did the Miller fall protection training, do you know what the guy's name is that's a big Miller fall protection expert? He was like old school guy. It doesn't matter. Anyways, what he said in the training was, and I'll do a real dry voice, but, "Blood and guts wrote all these standards." All the standards that come and happen, he would just tell us, "The only way this stuff gets fixed is people got to get hurt." If we can prevent as much as that possible by kind of furthering this conversation I think it's a good thing.

Dave:

You know, Rose was one of the original fall protection manufacturers. I was told this, and I don't know this to specifically true, but when they started testing stuff one of the ways that they found out that body belts were a bad idea was dogs. Imagine them throwing dogs in these body belts and dropping them just to see what the traumatic activity.

Fred:

Oh, good god.

Dave:

Can you imagine like a stack of doberman pinchers?

Fred:

Like I said, that's it for us today.

Dave:

I'm sorry. ASPCA, I'm sorry.

Fred:

Yeah, so we never think about this stuff. We never think it can happen to us until it's too late. In the age of information I'd say we can do better than that. Until next time, Dave and Bacon's Safety Tales. We'll see you next time, thanks.

Outro:

Thanks for listening in to Dave and Bacon's Safety Tales, brought to you by Quad City Safety. Send us your questions on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter @QuadCitySafety #SafetyTales, or email them to Fred @ quadcitysafety.com. He's the guy keeping this mess of a show in line. If you like the show please rate and review us on iTunes. It's a kick-ass way to show that you care about safety.