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 to Dave and Bacon's Safety Tales, episode three. Once again, I'm Fred [Redunzel 00:00:15], Quad City Safety, working alongside my partner here, not partner like that, but my partner, Dave White. Dave, say hello.

Dave:

Hey now.

Fred:

Hey hey. So today, in episode three, we're gonna talk about a topic that really confuses the piss out of me, as a matter of fact, I barely even know what we're talking about, so this should be interesting. PPE for chronic, versus acute hazards. Basically, the gist of it, what I'm figuring is, means short term, versus long term hazards. Dave can you kind of explain the terminology to me?

Dave:

Well, I mean-

Fred:

Explain it to Fred.

Dave:

Most people when we sit there and we talk about a hazard, everybody thinks that it's the bullet proof vest. The day that somebody's getting ready to walk up, and rob us, and they shoot us in our bulletproof vest, that was the personal protective equipment, and it stopped the bullet. Well, not all situations happen that quickly. So, when we say, "Happen that quickly." Is it can be something that we're ingesting, whether it's not having a respirator on, and sucking something in over years, and years, and years, that doesn't show up.

An acute hazard is something that happens immediately. If we're gonna fall, it's fall protections that stops it right then. It could be-

Fred:

I shoot you, the bullet kills you.

Dave:

Correct, it's a now hazard. Personal protective equipment, can be meant to stop something that's gonna legitimately happen right now. Obviously, if I'm running a grinder, and I have my eye protection on, that is going to stop the acute hazard from happening. Meaning, something that's gonna ... you know, that glancing blow from the shard, or whatever might hit our eye.

When we start talking about chronic, the problem is, is chronic hazards are the ones that are looked over. It's something that happens over time. It's not something that, we walk into an industrial situation, and I don't know, there's some kind of off gas. We know it kind of smells a little funny, a little icky, but we still go to work every day, and we breathe it in. Day two, we don't smell it anymore, day five, the only reason that we ever even know it happens, is because of the new guy.

30 years later, we're walking around, and we're growing grapes off our neck, or something. It's because we didn't use personal protective equipment for a chronic exposure, something that happens over time. It can be a glove, so let's say we're sticking our hands, daily, into methyl ethyl death, methyl ethyl ketone. Methyl ethyl ketone, not a good situation if you're sitting there, bathing in it daily.

Fred:

It's not great, but it's pretty fun to say. Like that sounds pretty good. Methyl ethyl ketone.

Dave:

It's probably one of the easier hazards to roll off the tongue, than some of the other ones.

Fred:

Yeah. But you can't spell it.

Dave:

Methyl ethyl ketone.

Fred:

Yeah but you can't spell it.

Dave:

Versus carcinogenic. Some of those are easier, but some of the other compounds that are not good for us, I'm not even gonna try, with my souther accent, it's probably gonna sound like a bunch of garbage anyways, so. Might as well not go there.

Fred:

You have to look it up on the periodic table to pronounce some of the sub words-

Dave:

Typically, not the periodic table. There's stuff on the periodic table that's not good for you. Typically, it's a compound, which a compound, is more than one of those little combinations off of-

Fred:

Well that's what I'm mean, for like, the sub words. So you got the first part, the second part, the third part. You might ... no, whatever.  I'm a moron. Anyways. So, this-

Dave:

I don't think you're a moron all the time. Just some of the times.

Fred:

Well, when it comes to methyl ethyl ketone, and the hazards of it-

Dave:

If you're bathing in it, yeah. You're an idiot.

Fred:

It's gonna take some time. Might help you grow some grapes on your neck, as you said.

Dave:

Yeah, I mean, anytime you're in that stuff, whether it's cancerogenic, or stuff that over time typically, your body gets in kind of goes, "Yuck." And then you kind of grow other stuff from the yuck. It's just not a long term situation that's good.

Fred:

Okay. So, do you want to ... why don't you get into your story for this week.

Dave:

This one's kind of heartfelt, because it's something that ... we found out later, through looking at the science of it, my father was in Vietnam. He was exposed to a lot of compounds out there, one of them being Agent Orange. The problem with Agent Orange, is they used it to kind of, burn vegetation against a lot of the Guerrilla Fighters in Vietnam, and so it was something that they used, probably, just like a lot of things, is there was no science behind ... "Well, yeah, we kind of put it next to him for a day, and everybody seemed to wake up the next morning, so it should be okay."

Well there was no acute hazards, so they didn't walk by it one day, and keel over. It's a chronic exposure, and there's a lot of ... how to say, it's not necessarily the most scientific proven, so I'm not gonna sit there, and say that it's anything other than the fact, that when you look back ... my father, a couple years ago, all of a sudden, "Oh, I got a really high PSA score." That's not good, kind of cancer driven score.

Fred:

All right, hang on. Explain it to Fred, PSA score.

Dave:

PSA score, as it gets higher, is gonna raid the prostate cancer. Basically, Agent Orange, when they've looked back to Vietnam vets, and there was a high exposure to Agent Orange, people's PSA scores were high, and it's not uncommon for them to go through, what's called, the widow maker heart attack, which is a very specific heart attack, lower part of the heart.

Fred:

Specific to Vietnam veterans, or just a specific type of heart attack?

Dave:

No, it's just a kind of heart attack, where it's one of those ones, that if they don't have your chest cracked open on the operating table, they are not gonna revive you.

Fred:

Got you.

Dave:

How to say ... that chronic exposure, or the exposure to it over time, led to a higher PSA score. Led to a heart attack, and that's been something that's been documented, and true to a lot of Vietnam vets, but it wasn't something that they just were exposed to one day, they were exposed to during a period of time. Over time, the cause of what happened to them was, well, my father died at 69. Appeared to be in pretty good shape. Me being a doughy guy, he wasn't a big guy. Really wasn't anything wrong with him, but you know what, he's not walking around the earth right now.

Fred:

And you think they can attribute that to-

Dave:

Yeah there's enough causal information, but my point is, a lot of things we don't understand what the long term exposure to. I mean, there's science out there that say, "Don't set your cell phone on parts of your body, because over time, microwaves can be damaging to the body mass." You know?

Fred:

Right, I remember seeing a Dateline, or 20/20, or one of those type of shows, when the Nokia cell phone was big, that had the big antenna that sat right on the side of it. They were finding tumors on people's brains, that were in the exact shape of the cell phone.

Dave:

A lot of those companies have lawyers that will, they'll sit there and say, "Oh, it wasn't us, there's no way that could be."

Fred:

It's in the shape of a damn cell phone on my brain.

Dave:

It's like, bullshit, come on, man. Again, that's something that didn't happen, if everybody accepted one phone call off a Nokia, everybody from about, I don't know, late '90s through 2005 would be just comatose dead.

Fred:

From playing the snake game.

Dave:

Right? The little ring tone that they had.

Fred:

It was a good game, at least those phones would last forever. You throw it off the top of a building, bounce on the ground, still talk on it, the next thing. The battery-

Dave:

Charge it on Monday, maybe Saturday, charge it again of an hour.

Fred:

Charge it for 15 minutes, you're back for three days.

Dave:

Yeah.

Fred:

Yeah.

Dave:

Yeah, that shit doesn't happen anymore.

Fred:

Nope. All right. So, anyways, back to the main points of talking these types of hazards. Do you wanna use the Erin Brockovich story, to kind of help define the difference between acute, versus chronic hazards, to really nail this thing down?

Dave:

Anybody that's seen that, I like to refer to that story, or that movie, because first of all, everybody knows the actress.

Fred:

Yeah, Julia Roberts.

Dave:

Kind of hot. You got her, running around a Texas town trying to get people to come out, and talk about a situation, which was basically, ground water contamination, as it related to a chemical plant. That's something, that again, they didn't walk out one day, drink a glass of water, and drop over. It was something that happened, over a period of time. It took years, and years to kind of, go, "Wait a second, why in a very specific geography, do we have people that are dying with a very specific type of cancer, in specific age groups?" Blah, blah, blah, and all of a sudden, you go, "Hmm Erin Brockovich." She wasn't even an attorney, she was like a paralegal.

Fred:

Right.

Dave:

She runs around-

Fred:

With a push-up bra.

Dave:

With a push-up bra, yeah. Right on. She finally puts together that, "Wait a second, there's something here, and these assholes did it. Wait a second, I think they might have known that they did it." It's the whole Philip Morris thing.

Fred:

Yeah. Yeah, probably a million cases of it out there ... getting back to the last episode about fall protections, that blood and guts write the standards, so you kind of see the effect of what happened, or you see power points.

Dave:

It's easy when all of a sudden, they show you with a nail shot through somebody's eye, you're like, "Oh my goodness, I need to wear my safety glasses." It's harder to have somebody in a situation, where they walk in, and they can't really see it, and they can't really smell it, taste it, but it's getting into their blood stream, and over time, kind of, rotting them from the inside out. Until all of a sudden-

Fred:

Starting to chisel-

Dave:

15 years later they drop over, they're like, "What the hell happened to Ted?"

Fred:

Yeah, or talking, not necessarily life, and death, I don't know, in some cases, it is life, and death. You find that a lot with a hearing program that like-

Dave:

Same thing.

Fred:

Guys doing the same job over, and over again, it's not hurting his ears.

Dave:

Huh? Huh? Huh?

Fred:

Slowly but surely-

Dave:

Huh?

Fred:

You're doing your Stone Cold.

Dave:

Yeah but-

Fred:

What?

Dave:

Yeah but that's exact great point there, is it doesn't have to be a chemical. Noise, it's a sound wave, you can't see it, you can't smell it. We've all been exposed, anybody that was listening to And Justice for All, the Metallica album, back in the '90s was subjected to it, 'cause we had our headphone cranked up. We're probably above that threshold of 85 decibels, kind of rocking out, and now when our kids go to call us by name, we're walking around the backyard like some lost dog. We can't hear anymore, because again, we were exposed to something that did damage over time.

We didn't listen to it one time, and wake up deaf. It was something that happened over time. Had we been, not a dumb ass, and dawned our personal protective equipment, in that case, hearing protection, or put an engineered control in, by turning the damn thing down just enough, enough to rock out-

Fred:

Right, you can still rock out and get laid, but ...

Dave:

But not so much, that your kids and your grandkids are talking to you, and you're like, "I can't hear the words that are coming out of your mouth."

Fred:

Probably guys that are mowing the lawn. Just steady engines, different-

Dave:

It doesn't take much, doesn't take much. Back to your point, is sound. It's not something that a lot of people think about, and we're surround by those.

Fred:

Yeah, it's not painful.

Dave:

Yeah. If you look at the sun once a day, in probably, weeks, month, years, you're probably not gonna be able to see. It wasn't the first time. Couple of weeks ago, when we had that total eclipse of the sun, not a total eclipse of the heart. Total eclipse of the sun, every dumb ass on the planet, wanted to look up-

Fred:

And I need you now tonight.

Dave:

Wanted to look up at it.

Fred:

Yep. I peeked. I took a peek. Like a real asshole I took a peek, and I was like, "Ugh."

Dave:

Who didn't, 'cause they say eclipse, and you look up, "Ow, man, didn't they just say that on the news for the last month, not to look at it?"

Fred:

Yeah, it had that guy in Oregon, like 1960, looked up at the sun ,and was blind for the rest of his life. I'll still take my chances, and take a quick peek.

Dave:

Yeah, just a quick ... it's not gonna hurt me.

Fred:

Yeah.

Probably vibrating tools. That'd be another good example-

Dave:

Musculoskeletal disorders. Yeah.

Fred:

Using those vibrating tools over, and over, and over.

Dave:

All of sudden they're like, "I don't know,-

Fred:

I can't grip my fork.

Dave:

Yeah I can't pick up my dinner.

Fred:

Speaking of that, my father-in-law, has been a mechanic his entire life. That's what he is, he's in about in his 60s now, got terrible arthritis, and he uses those cushions, like a cushion that sneaks over the top of silverware, so you can get a grip on to it-

Dave:

Kind of like that old man putter grip?

Fred:

Yeah.

Dave:

Looks like it's got a roll of carpet under it?

Fred:

Yep. It's like you're grabbing onto a Snickers bar to putt. Maybe the king size?

All right, so, I guess, we're saying, you don't need an anvil to fall on your head, to get hurt.

Dave:

That's the acute thing that we're all driven to, when we look at personal protective equipment. We look at the-

Fred:

We're not the coyote.

Dave:

Violence and bloodshed, violence and bloodshed. We're looking for something that's gonna hit, and it's gonna be ... everyday we're in the war of life, and some of us are not gonna be killed by just straight gunfire. It's gonna be things that happen over time, or things that we subjected ourselves to. It can be things that we can see, it can be things that we can't see. At the end of the day, it's something that compromises, whether it's our ability to see, maybe we grow grapes out of the neck. We have some situation, whether it's a cancer, it can be any number of things. We can do it to ourselves in diet.

You sit there, and you walk around, and you see, how the hell did we end up with this epidemic of diabetes? Well, you know any dumb ass can kind of figure out, high fructose corn syrup's probably not the best thing to ingest. If you sit there, and ingest it, eating them Snicker bars, I'm kind of heavy, and I need to pay attention to what I'm doing. That takes the fact that somebody told me, through science, "Hey, dumb ass, don't eat high fructose corn syrup. Change your diet, eat some green stuff, eat a vegetable."

Fred:

It's bad for you, you're getting fat. It wasn't like a slow thing either, like you see yourself going down that line. Getting heavier, and heavier, and it's like, I know what needs to happen to stop this, but I'm not gonna do it.

Dave:

I'm not even gonna pump the brakes, what the hell, let's roll through the stop sign.

Fred:

Let's see what happens.

Dave:

Not even gonna yield. No brakes.

Fred:

All right, lets spill the beans, then. How can we avoid risk? What do you think?

Dave:

How can we avoid risk? Well, the first thing that we have to do, is we kind of gotta be real with ourselves. We need to pay attention to what's going on, and look at what we're being exposed to. Anytime you walk into, let's go a construction site, great example. The reason that I say construction site, is a lot of people go to a job that every day, the job that they go to, looks pretty close to the job the day before. The environment's pretty much the same.

Fred:

Right. Especially for long stretches of time.

Dave:

Yeah. Construction is something that, today, we're building a road, tomorrow we may be building a building. We may be on the second floor of the building, we may be on the third floor of the building. We may be putting different things in different places, and creating hazards that, A, wasn't there today, B, won't be there tomorrow, but C, will be something else that we didn't even think about, the day before yesterday.

Fred:

Okay.

Dave:

A lot of it's awareness in paying attention to the fact, that variables change. We may introduce a new chemical into a production process that we haven't used before. Some engineer comes out of Iowa State and kind of marches down there and goes, "Hey man, we need to use this to cut the paint." And everybody's like, "Oh that's great, what do we use?" "Oh, I'll just pour it in there, oh it's great."

Well nobody pays attention to the MSDS, that says, "Hey, if you don't use the personal protective equipment you will grow grapes out of your neck."

Fred:

Right, so would you say that the first step is gonna be a risk assessment?

Dave:

Yeah, just paying attention to what's going on around you.

Fred:

Yeah.

Dave:

If you don't know, don't just go, "Hey, man." I've walked around this earth for a long time, just trying not to pay attention to stuff, if I don't know it won't hurt me, it won't hurt me.

Fred:

Keep your head in the sand.

Dave:

You can't have the little ostrich, burring your head in the sand, and acting like nothing is gonna hurt you, it's kind of a bullshit way to go through it. You're not gonna end up with the best outcome.

Fred:

Okay. So we're saying, not only, probably, for a lot of people that are listening to this, that are safety specific people, you're maybe making a risk assessment for your staff, but they probably also need to be making personal risk assessment for themselves. That something you need to train.

Dave:

Correct. We all employ how to say, most companies have people that are paid to do risk assessments and go, "What are we doing?"

Fred:

Yeah.

Dave:

But, every person has an obligation to their selves, and their families, to make sure that they're a second set of eyes.

Fred:

Yeah.

Dave:

Any safety director, or risk manager, that you point out, "Hey this is a problem." that doesn't stop, and address that. They're potential dumb ass of the week, because they're putting somebody into harms way and making a situation that's gonna compromise somebody's family, or an outcome to them.

Fred:

Okay. So then the next step would be, PPE? Right? So that's gonna be, after you make the risk assessment-

Dave:

Well, after you make the risk assessment, and you go, "Well, I think-

Fred:

Or maybe it would start even before PPE, maybe we should start with training.

Dave:

Yes. Training is coming in from the stand point of, let's put one thing in there before that is, let's say we realize, "Hey, this could potentially hurt us." Well we should stop and go, "Well, man do we really gotta do that? Can we engineer that out? Can we put a fan in here, or a vent system that kind of pulls this away from us, so we don't even have to sit in this funk, and have that potential."

Engineering controls can come in. After we sat there and done a hazard assessment, and figured out what can hurt us and we go, "Well this can hurt us, can we figure out how to get it out of there?"

Fred:

Right.

Dave:

A lot of people don't spend a lot time trying to engineer stuff out, that just kind of go, "Well, no, that's what we've done, that's how we always done it, or that's the only way to do it." We don't try to take those engineer controls. If we can engineer it out, obviously it's kind of like, in the crusades, nobody would have wore body armor if they didn't think they were going to go to battle.

Fred:

Right.

Dave:

So, if we have PPE on, we've gone, "You know what? We kind of looked around there, there's some people over here that wanna hurt me, and I think I'm gonna have to go fight them, because I can't run from them, because we believe in what we believe in, and we're gonna try to eradicate those. So, since we're gonna go into battle, we think we might be able to die, we're gonna put on our body armor, and march into battle."

Fred:

Yeah, and now do we know how to wear that PPE correctly?

Dave:

Well, yeah. That's where the training comes into it, is how many times do you have to see somebody, whether it's something as easy as hearing protection? People are kind of putting the earplug up to their ear, letting it kind of expand, because they're like, "Well, Larry the safety director, he's an asshole and he says we have to wear these."

Fred:

I have to wear this so I'm wearing it.

Dave:

I've got the stuff in.

Fred:

It's touching my ear.

Dave:

It's touching my ear, so it should be doing what it's supposed to. Well, no. It's a device that's been designed to do something specifically, if it's worn in a very specific manner. Not pacific, specific. We just don't do it, and that becomes, from a training stand point, it can be things like if we're wearing a respirator. Training people, "Well, this is the respirator that you need to wear, and we're gonna teach you how to put it in. We're gonna teach you how to maintain it, and you know what? What the hell, while we're doing it, why don't we make sure it fits right?"

Fred:

Yeah, why the hell not?

Dave:

I mean, that's the thing, is safety it's pretty self-explanatory, if you really sit there, and think about it. Sit there just going, "Oh nothings gonna hurt me." When we break out into Superman, bulletproof shit, then we end up making some bad decisions. We've identified it, we've said, "Here's our body armor that we're gonna wear. I probably should put the breastplate on my breast, not my ass so that I'm protecting my ass, but I get stabbed in the chest, oh I'm dead. Sorry, they didn't tell me that." They should tell it, and you should put it on.

Fred:

Got you. I know one thing about, every time we do a training class, or something, that I've done with you, you kind of always start with the box. What people tend to do, is to get their thing out of the box, toss the box over their head, but there's instructions that come in that box.

Dave:

Usually, everything that you buy anymore, has a lot of packaging material, and there's usually this black and white piece of paper. It's usually like, five different languages, 'cause they're like, "Hey, this is important, pay attention to this." Inherently, it doesn't matter what it is. Like you say, they rip it out, they're like a kid on Christmas morning, they're so excited to get it. They rip it out of the package-

Fred:

It's like, hey man, it's just a pair of earmuffs, chill out.

Dave:

They rip it open, and nobody breaks out that thing that says, "Well, this doesn't work, if you don't do this."

Fred:

Right.

Dave:

Again, obviously, the company that made it, felt that they had a legal obligation to explain it a certain way, and we're just not gonna pay attention to it.

Fred:

All right, once again, chronic, and acute. So, chronic, we're not just talking about the chronic.

Dave:

No.

Fred:

We're not talking that chronic.

Dave:

No, not Dre's chronic.

Fred:

And you're not super acute. There's different types, but ... so anyways, back on task. It's time for our favorite segment, the dumb ass of the week.

Intro Speaker:

It's the dumb ass of the week.

Fred:

Fictional name, once again, lets call this guy Sven, he's European.

Dave:

Doesn't speak, a little bit of broken English.

Fred:

Little bit of broken English, he's adorable, he goes to the bar at night. He's got no problems.

Dave:

No, none, whatsoever.

Fred:

So Sven, tall handsome blonde, what does Sven do? Do you remember?

Dave:

Well, Sven is, like you said, he's this person that, he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, you know? He came from Eastern Bloc Europe, right after they tore down the wall, and kind of missed that whole, late '70s outbreak of asbestos. This guy, the dumb ass of the week, nobody's told him, and he didn't do any research, but he would warm his lunch up, and this is actually a true story. When he would warm his sandwich up, with his torch, would put his sandwich bread on top of a piece of asbestos, and warm his sandwich up.

Not thinking about the fact, that ingesting asbestos, whether you're touching it, or whether you're breathing it, anybody that's been up after, probably about, 9:45, has seen a whole plethora of, "If you had a family member that worked in such and such, you need to sue the shit out of such." It's just out there. It's stuff that, again, people didn't pay attention to.

Fred:

Yeah, the Law Offices of Dumb Ass and Turd.

Dave:

Yeah, but hey man, they got a class action suit with multi-billions of dollars, to reward you for dying. That sounds really worth it. You know what, Fred? Nobody gives a shit who the richest person in the graveyard is. They don't really care. There's no measure. I guess you could have a big statue with you on a horse, being happy, but nobody celebrates that shit. Who cares?

Fred:

Yeah, funny enough, that was something I just heard. I think they were doing a study, it was on Lorne Michaels, the guy that stared Saturday Night Live.

Dave:

Okay.

Fred:

They were doing a study on super, super successful people. This has got nothing to do with, really what we're talking about, but leading to what you just said, they said that you cannot keep their interest. They're all about doing what they wanna do, they're gonna be successful, they have tasks at hand, they make a list, they're following through on it. The one way that you can get to them, is their mortality. If you have a way that I can make ... I got this pill, it'll make you live five years longer. That's a way that you can get at those guys, because they're like, "All this great shit that's happening to me my whole life is all so awesome, it can't end. I gotta keep it going."

Dave:

Yeah.

Fred:

If it's a pill-

Dave:

I'm staying on life rollercoaster-

Fred:

Whether it's Ted Williams, whatever he died from.

Dave:

Yeah.

Fred:

That's something, but back to Sven. He knew there was problems with what he was doing.

Dave:

He may not have, but somebody had to have-

Fred:

Help Sven out?

Dave:

Somebody should have gone, "Sven, you're being a dumb ass." When we talk about the dumb ass of the week-

Fred:

He can be an ignorant dumb ass.

Dave:

You can be an ignorant dumb ass, but hopefully, in this day and age, we've surrounded ourselves with people, that have an, even if it's a low level of give a shit, even a minor level of give a shit, would say, "Hey Sven, that's bad."

Fred:

Come on Sven. Be better my man. So really, in a circumstance like this, when someone's ignorant, they have to rely on the people around them to tell them-

Dave:

We owe it to ... we don't have to live in this damn Kumbaya world, everything doesn't have to be hugfest, but at some point in time, we owe it to the people that we work in and around, to go, "You know, I might know a little bit more than you, and I'm pretty sure that I read, or heard on the TV last night, that you're not supposed to do that, and I'm gonna tell you Sven, don't be a dumb ass."

Fred:

Yeah, don't be a dumb ass. All right, moving on. This week we're gonna go through Dave's email again, and we're gonna answer some questions.

Dave:

Those things keep coming, Jiminy Crickets, that's-

Fred:

The emails keep piling up.

Dave:

That bastard that came up with that.

Fred:

But, if you have a question, that you would like to submit, or like to have us answer, here on the show, send me an email. It's fred@quadcitysafety.com, reach out to us on any of the social media platforms. Once again, we're on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn @quadcitysafety, search Quad City Safety, it'll show up. You can use a hashtag, don't use a hashtag, we'll read it, and we'll answer it on the show. Please hit us up.

Number one, "We're having eye injuries, even though we're wearing safety glasses."

Dave:

Well, safety glasses is generic. So basically, safety glasses came out through the, what was the Christmas movie? A Christmas Story, "You'll shoot your eye out."

Fred:

Yep.

Dave:

Well, obviously, you know that there's a projectile that can hit the eye. That's basic rule number one. Well, what does that mean? "Well, we kept the BB from hitting our eye, but what else is going on around?" Typically, whether it's industrial, or construction situation, there's a large majority of eye injuries, that still happen with people wearing some level of eye protection. It can be metal shards, or dust that gets around the glasses. That's why you seen the charge forward with the gasket style glasses.

There's other things that could compliment that. Polycarbonate safety glasses that everybody's been wearing, and again, keep dust, it could be, "Okay, I'm wearing safety glasses, but I'm dispensing a chemical. Wait a second, that chemical is bad. What is it?"

I've done it myself, meaning, I had my sunglasses on, I was working on the pool. I'm pouring chlorine in, and anybody's that poured chlorine into a pool, knows that, that stuff will splash.

Fred:

Right.

Dave:

And all of a sudden, I could be the dumb ass of the week, myself, because it wasn't too many years ago, that I took a little chlorine dip in the eye, and I had my sunglasses, not my safety glasses on. Same thing, is oh wait a second, if someone shot a BB at my eye, might have kept that out, but it didn't keep the fact that a little bit of choline hits my brow, drips down, 'cause I'm kind of a sweaty guy, gets in my eye, and next thing you know, I'm half blind in my right eye for a month and a half, while that's all healing.

Fred:

Yeah. No bueno. All right-

Dave:

No bueno at all.

Fred:

Question number two ... oh you know what? What you just said in question number one, gasket style glasses. So you're talking a foam lined glass, like we've seen, or there's other types?

Dave:

You have all kinds, you have just a goggle.

Fred:

And what's the goal?

Dave:

The goal?

Fred:

Right.

Dave:

Is that secondary hazard, meaning, we know that we can have some level of projectile, that's the main reason to wear a safety glass. Obviously, we don't wanna aim the nail gun at our face, and start pulling the trigger.

Fred:

Right.

Dave:

It's, again, let's say that dust can accumulate on the part of hard hat, in a face shield situation, that then filters down off the brim, bounces off our safety glasses, and gets in our eye. So, that can be particulate matter, metal shards.

Fred:

Levels of dust.

Dave:

Yeah it could just be regular dust. Again, it's keeping, that secondary hazard that if we did our risk assessment the right way, the first time, and went, "Yep, we're keeping that out, but oh, wait a second, we're over here pouring chemicals. Maybe we should really think about, when we're dispensing chemicals, that safety glass needs to be upped a little bit, into a goggle, a splash type goggle." Which they do make, it's not 1926, and everybody's running around ignorant.

We know that there's stuff out there, we've identified it, and used that product.

Fred:

Question number two, "Hey Dave, they're telling me we're over the allowable limit, for hearing protection, how do we figure out what we need?

Dave:

Well, when you sit there, and look at it, the only real, real way is to use a [inaudible 00:36:28] sound level meter to really figure out what that exposure is, because we trigger at that 85 decibel. There's an amount of noise, it's okay, so if we're listening to our Beethoven, on 91.9, it's coming from the community college, and everything's good, we don't necessarily need any hearing protection.

Fred:

Beethoven could rock it though.

Dave:

Could.

Fred:

If he needed to.

Dave:

Could, back in his day.

Fred:

If he needed to, with his wig.

Dave:

But, all of a sudden we step up, and it becomes a little bit louder. We have all these little cilia in our ears, that can become damaged at that trigger point, of above 85 decibels. First of all, is we gotta figure out, what our exposure is to. You can have a little bit of anything, how much? Well, most science has figured out, don't eat a lot of lead, don't chew on paint chips, because you might have a lead exposure, and over time not good things are gonna happen.

Fred:

Did you eat paint chips as a kid?

Dave:

Probably a little bit of what's wrong with me.

Fred:

Why? Tommy Boy.

Dave:

Again, it's paying attention to, you can have a little bit of anything. If you took anybody's blood right now, they're gonna have a little bit of lead in it. Any environment that we're walking around, if you walk outside, there's some level of noise out there. Noise being, a measurable thing, is at that trigger point we need to figure out how loud is it?

If we're sitting there walking around jet engines, or something like that, to where the decibel rating is this huge amount, we've gotta figure out, how to bring that down to where we're not subjected, and we're not killing our ears with that high concentration of noise. A lot of times, when you sit there, if you don't open up the box, and throw away the directions, or not read the box, they'll usually have a noise reduction rating that's on the box.

Again, that NRR that's on the box, is perfect situation. So, if all of a sudden I'm gonna use big round numbers, is the NRR is 30, that's doesn't meant that you can add 30 to 85.

Fred:

Yeah.

Dave:

And then get, oh, so anything that's below 125 decibels, I'm fine.

Fred:

I'm good.

Dave:

It does not work that way, because again. That's a lab situation, where they've tested it, "Well, do I have a narrow ear canal? Do I have a large ear canal? Did I insert it into my ear correctly?" 'cause when we talk about hearing protection, the biggest problem is, again, we take that little marshmallow, and set it up on the side of our ear, just because this safety director, Fred, said, "You gotta wear your hearing protection." "Okay, I'm gonna put it in, but I'm not gonna put it in correctly."

Then he's not getting the NRR that he should. When we look at that NRR, I usually say, divide it by two, and subtract seven. So, that if we're at 30, 15, 15 minus seven, so, all of a sudden we're in the mid 90s, low mid 90s of exposure, with your regular disposable plug.

Fred:

Is that what Dave says, or is that what somebody that matters says?

Dave:

I'd like to believe that I matter. Maybe I don't, but in my own little world I do. There's tests out there that are ... there's language out there that suggests that that's the best practice, how about that?

Fred:

Okay, cool. All right, question three, "What in the hell are these numbers on my gloves?"

Dave:

Oh boy. Anybody that's seen hand protection, used to be just some kind of trade name, and they thought if anything was yellow, that it was Kevlar, even though it wasn't. Could've been Kevlar, might not have been Kevlar. When we look at gloves today, there are standards that things are tested to. It's not uncommon for there to be cut scores, like they just revised the cut score, when you look at the United States, refers to different cut scores than the European. EN388, which is a cut standard, or it's a standard for testing gloves. There will be four numbers underneath this EN388. The thing to always remember, there is, act professionally. A-C-T-P.

Abrasion, cut, tear, puncture. Those four scores, and there'll be a number. One is low, four is high. When you're looking at those numbers that's on that glove, that tells you how that glove performs. If it's a cut standard in the United States, it will be an A1 through an A9.

So, an A1, little bit of cut resistance, everything has cut resistance, even human skin has some level of cut resistance.

Fred:

Right.

Dave:

It's how it's been tested. When you look at a glove, it can be that, it can be a thermal rating. There's tests that measure, how hot can something be to where I pick up. There's even standards that test how they conduct heat, how the, just like an R factor on a house, is like a lot winter gloves, will have, I believe it's, don't quote me on this, but it's like EN511, but it tests that if I'm picking up something cold, how long until my hand's cold?

Fred:

Right.

Dave:

Kind of stuff.

Again, depending on what the number is as it relates to standard, there's all those numbers, and things that are on the back of those gloves, all mean something. Typically, the directions, and the box have what all that stuff is. If you don't know it's always good to ask your safety professional anyway.

Fred:

Cool. All right. That'll do it for those questions. Okay, now, you mentioned earlier that you had not seen the newest season of Narcos?

Dave:

No I have not.

Fred:

Did you see the first two seasons, with Pablo Escobar?

Dave:

I'm like half way through season two, I think.

Fred:

Okay, in this newest season, and this isn't gonna spoil anything, no big spoiler alert that needs to happen. There's a scene in there, that I guess, Cali Cartel, who's a little bit in season two, but they come over to season three. They're the ones that kind of, end up pushing Pablo Escobar out. It ends up in his demise, not breaking any news, this is history.

Dave:

So that's real huh?

Fred:

That's real. Pablo Escobar actually did all that shit. Super dangerous. What they had was, they figured out that because the tanks, they had chlorine tanks, and the figured out that the tanks were hazardous, and so when they crossed the boarder, no one's opening up those tanks, and seeing what's inside, because it's all marked hazardous. They end up, that's how they start moving their drugs. They empty these choline tanks, stuff all their drugs in then they can get across the boarder.

Dave:

Pretty wise, pretty wise.

Fred:

It's pretty crafty. Anyways, what they were doing, was they were emptying those tanks, into the sewers. They were emptying the tanks into the sewers in Columbia, or Mexico, or wherever this was happening, in probably, what, the '80s?

Dave:

Yeah, something like that.

Fred:

This is going in through there, it's coming in through people's sinks, it's coming in to people's house. Children are getting sick from this, and so, they're probably gonna have long term effects, they're probably gonna have some acute, they're probably gonna have some chronic.

Dave:

Yeah if you snort up enough of that I'm sure it's not good for you.

Fred:

It's like four deaths. When we started talking, would you consider that acute, an acute hazard, or would you consider that a chronic hazard? Or is that gonna be both?

Dave:

Well those four little children that died, I'm gonna call it an acute.

Fred:

You're gonna call that acute. So maybe the people that die 10 years from now, it might be a chronic hazard.

Dave:

Depends on what it is, and how long. There's a lot of sides to argue over there.

Fred:

Leading to chronic, one of my favorite CDs of all time was Dr. Dre's Chronic 2001.

Dave:

2001, I was more the '90s.

Fred:

The OG Chronic?

Dave:

Yeah, right on.

Fred:

So you're the Nuthin But A 'G' Thang, Chronic?

Dave:

Yeah baby.

Fred:

Now, did that thing get played when you were at Murray State? Was that Murray State time? The Chronic?

Dave:

Oh, classic. That was one, roll down the windows, and turn it up as much as you can, hopefully it bumped. We loved every bit of it.

Fred:

Yep, Chronic 2001, that was more when Eminem started coming into the mix.

Dave:

Yeah that was-

Fred:

When he got popular.

Dave:

That wasn't old school.

Fred:

It's kind of old school now.

Dave:

No, old school, now.

Fred:

You listen to classic rock stations now-

Dave:

Old school, when he was the guy that hung out ..."We gonna hang out on the porch." We're old school.

Fred:

I have no idea-

Dave:

He's a charterer in one of those Friday-

Fred:

Eminem?

Dave:

No, like Friday, or something like that.

Fred:

Ice Cube. Not Dr. Dre.

Dave:

Well, no. Remember ... "We're gonna hold down this hood on the porch, or whatever."

Fred:

Smokey?

Dave:

Yeah, and his mom would yell at him or whatever.

Fred:

Smokey.

Dave:

Yeah, right on.

Fred:

Anyways. That was a pretty dry one, but I guess that's it for today. Episode three. Dave, you got anything else?

Dave:

Anything else?

Fred:

Anything else you wanna talk about?

Dave:

Not right now.

Fred:

All right, cool. So, as much as we love hanging out with you guys, we gotta go get the kids. We have a shit ton of emails to reply to, they're gonna keep filling up. We appreciate you guys giving us the chance to tell stories, make a little bit of difference, when it comes to raising awareness over these kinds of preventable injuries, or worse, deaths.

Dave:

Don't want deaths.

Fred:

We don't like deaths. So, we'll be back at it again next week, with more safety stories. If you can't wait for more of Dave, and Bacon's Safety Tales, you can visit the Quad City Safety blog, hit us up on any of our social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Please leave us comments, questions, any feedback on acute hazards, on chronic hazards, if you have any questions, a question about something that we brought up in the episode.

Dave:

Hell, if you are lonely, and just want someone to talk to, Fred's always there for you.

Fred:

A companion. It'll probably alert to my phone, I'll probably be right there for you, whatever your needs are. Really whatever route works for you. Do not wait until tragedy strikes.

Dave:

Safety has no quitting time.

Fred:

To become an advocate for safety.

Dave:

Be an advocate.

Fred:

Be an advocate for safety.

Dave:

And for crying out loud, if you see somebody doing dumb ass shit, blow the whistle. Please blow the whistle.

Fred:

Point him out, and let us know that they can our next dumb ass of the week.

Dave:

If you have a dumb ass of the week, we would love to talk about that also.

Fred:

Yep. So, all right. Until 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.