PPE is the Last Line of Defense - Not First: Safety Tales Podcast Season 2 Episode 5

Narrator:

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

Fred R.:

Alright. What's up, everybody? Welcome to Dave and Bacon's Safety Tales, it's the best part of your week. Alright, we're coming at you with a Request A Topic today, so, really appreciate you guys joining us. We're gonna try and clear up a big misconception surrounding the PPE, so.

It's Fred and Dave here with Quad City Safety, feel free to reach out to us on any social media platforms. We're on LinkedIn, we're on Twitter, we're on Facebook, and I say it every episode, but really would appreciate hearing from you guys and getting your feedback, either on the podcast or any questions that you might have. Really, on anything safety or PPE related. Or if you wanna talk sports, I'm into that. Folk music 

Dave W.:

Like, Bob Dylan, folk music?

Fred R.:

Whatever you wanna talk about, I'm willing to take the questions, and I'll do some research, and we'll get back to you.

Dave W.:

Yeah, I mean. Well, I mean the whole thing that we're trying to present, here is that you don't have to live in a vacuum.

Fred R.:

Safety, despite the fact that most of the world tries to turn it into the boring-est shit on the planet that doesn't have to be. Who cares why you believe in safety? I always put it as there's two reasons that you believe in safety. One is because there is proof that there is a financial return, so the financial return. The second is that you get to go home and do whatever it is you wanna do. So whether you're trying to just work to get home so that you can do those other things, or you're doing it for just that financial incentive, it only makes sense. So who gives a shit which one you pick? Pick one. But we're here to make sure that you pick one and help you with it.

Fred R.:

Yeah. It's whatever you wanna do on the weekends, if you're a golfer or a fisherman, or a hunter,

Dave W.:

Disc golf. Maybe you're into world-class hacky sack, or something.

Fred R.:

Speaking of golf, I don't know if you caught, it was this past weekend, as we were recording this, it was this past weekend. I'm not sure when this will come out, so it could be month old news by the time it is, but over the course of the weekend and the golf tournament, my biggest pet peeve with golf, obviously, is that you don't make any noise. The crowds that are there, they get shushed.

Dave W.:

Uh, yeah for the most part. Unless there's that one ...

Fred R.:

The Waste Management Open in Phoenix.

Dave W.:

Yeah. That's the only one where it's like 70,000 people on the last hole, or something like that so, yeah.

Fred R.:

I think it's the 16th because I think you can see multiple holes from the seats.

Dave W.:

Yeah, something like that but that's the only one I've ever seen where it's like, these people are drunk and obnoxious.

Fred R.:

Yeah they get there at like five in the morning and then golf doesn't start until, like 11.

Dave W.:

And everybody's shit-faced by the time 

Fred R.:

But the tournament that was this weekend, there was a golfer that actually won the tournament, Justin Thomas, he's like 24, and ...

Dave W.:

Part of the ...

Fred R.:

Yeah, the bros that go and vacation together.

Dave W.:

Yeah, but imagine being that age.

Fred R.:

Oh yeah, 22 years old, 23 years old ... millions. Yeah. But, anyways, he hit a shot, and as the ball's like flying through the air, one of the guys in the crowd goes, "Get in the bunker." And all of a sudden, you watch as it lands, lands right in the middle of the fairway and the golfer turns around, he goes, "Who said that? Who said that? Did you say that? Did you say get in the bunker? Alright, have a nice day, you're gone, Buddy." And he got him kicked out of the golf tournament for that.

Dave W.:

Really?

Fred R.:

Yeah. And they actually kicked him out. I was like, "You pussy." I don't care if the guy was saying that.

Dave W.:

I would turn and laugh, that would be like ...

Fred R.:

Yeah, especially if it lands in the fairway.

Dave W.:

Yeah, I'd just [inaudible 00:04:22] fairway.

Fred R.:

Or at the end of the tournament, he apologized, but you gotta go full heel.

Dave W.:

He did apologize for getting the ...

Fred R.:

Like, the next day, or something like that, he apologized.

Dave W.:

Yeah, I mean.

Fred R.:

At the end of the tournament, you gotta go, "Yeah ask that guy that I kicked out how it went, I just won the tournament." You gotta go full dickhead, trying to do it that way. Yeah, I don't know how you can be in sports, you can have guys to root against, I feel like it's alright.

Dave W.:

Yeah.

Fred R.:

I'm a White Sox fan and I hate the Cubs. I'm a Tiger Woods fan and I hate Justin Thomas.

Dave W.:

Without that diversity there, I don't think you would have sports. People might play sports, but I think part of that whole draw is, me growing up, it was University of Louisville, University of Kentucky.

Fred R.:

Right.

Dave W.:

To this day, you know, I hate UofL fans. I mean, I start talking to 'em, I get noticeably pissed off about something ... I didn't go to the University of Kentucky, Nobody's ever done anything to me, but you know, just that, I don't know, that grit, you know, that you see. I mean, Superbowl. And you've got one team ... literally, if you go, don't wear any jerseys or anything, 'cause these guys are gonna ... it's the city of brotherly love, but they might beat the shit out of you.

Fred R.:

There's stuff at Santa Claus.

Dave W.:

Yeah.

Fred R.:

Anyways. So the topic of the day, kinda titled this one, PPE is the last line of defense, not the first. So, kinda wanna talk a little bit about when a job or task is risky, why putting PPE on should really be the last thing you do.

Dave W.:

Yeah because, you know really to start with, I mean, probably the biggest problem when we talk about safety is there's these lines between risk-management, the original engineering, and safety. So, what happens is, all of a sudden somebody comes ... let's say they're building a building ... so somebody comes in there and this architecture builds this beautiful structure and then all of a sudden you're looking at it and you go, "How in the hell did we end up here?" I'll give you a classic example, the city of Davenport builds this new police station, okay. And they put this, they called it a green roof, so it's basically grass structure, it's meant to have a yard on top of the building or whatever. But it's green and it's all this good stuff.

Fred R.:

Yep.

Dave W.:

And it looks pretty from looking at it, I guess from a drone's perspective, or whatever, 'cause you can't really see it from street view. So, all of a sudden I get a call one day, and the problem that they had was to get somebody up there, somebody had to go weed it and do maintenance with it. Well nobody had ever figured out how the hell this person was gonna get there, so literally they take me out and I'm like, I'm laughing to myself, 'cause I'm like, you're gonna need like $20,000 worth of fall protection because you have to go out on a roof, you have to walk the roof-line, you have to traverse down a ladder, and then you have to put in basically a restraint system because you got a leading edge in front of you. And that's one where they're all of a sudden they're calling us, going, hey we need PPE, and with some basic engineering controls from the start, when that architect started doing that, if the people that managed the risk, or even a safety professional looked at that and was even given the consideration to go, "What do you think about that?" Somebody could have said, "Well how in the hell are you gonna maintain that?" 'Cause you gotta get here 'cause there's no other way to get there.

Fred R.:

How's the guy gonna take the hedge clipper out there?

Dave W.:

Oh, wait a second, maybe we should put a door here, or maybe we'll build a guard rail in, or ... but those are things that could have been solved in the beginning. So, going back a hundred years of my life, not a hundred years, that's bullshit. But back in the day.

Fred R.:

Yeah, back in the day when you walked uphill both ways.

Dave W.:

Yeah and it was snowing, and all that shit.

Fred R.:

Yeah.

Dave W.:

But, you know, I worked around tobacco a lot, and so I looked to that as a good examples also. Where there's all this stuff going on, so basically, it's time to cut tobacco. So, the first thing you're doing is the way you walk through the fields and cut it. Well you're swinging knives all over the place so if you're not paying attention, the whole problem is you can cut yourself. Then you've got the process of putting it on your tobacco sticks, so you're actually picking it off the ground, putting it on the sticks, then you have to lift it to a scaffold wagon, the you have to move it to a barn, and then you have to pass it up through these rafters that ... the structure's not sealed down, so nothing's nailed ... so everything's moving around. You have no fall protection on, and you know, you look at that, and you go, "That's a perfect case scenario that we could start over and figure out how, number one, where the potential hazards are and start and kinda go, what could we engineer out of that." And, the answer's not always gonna be, well we'll just put PPE up.

Fred R.:

Right.

Dave W.:

You know, we'll put cut resistant products. What if we changed some of the tools? What if we changed or we utilized some 2018 mentalities and technologies to pick and lift in place? There's a lot of things that we could reinvent and it wouldn't be at all centered around the fact that there's gonna be unsafe practices, so we just have to take ... we're putting ourselves in the line of fire ... so we need to put our bulletproof vests on and run into it.

Fred R.:

Right. Even like, in regards to like, cuts, I'm trying to think of some other examples, I know fall protection obviously is a big one that there's all different kinds of ways that you can engineer something so that a guy can't fall. I mean, it could even be ... or I guess they use, like, restraint stuff [crosstalk 00:11:41] preventing someone from getting to a fall.

Dave W.:

Yeah. But I was talking to somebody, this was a story somebody told in class. It centered around, it was a manufacturing facility, and the problem that they had was there was this piece of machinery that people could walk through. So, the break room, there was a piece of machinery and the break room was on the other side of it. So, somebody would hit the button and the machine would close and do whatever it's supposed to do, I'm not sure exactly what it's supposed to do. But people would continuously walk through that. So, there was never, nobody ever put, you know, a control there, never put, you know, all they would had have to do was put a wall there, put some way that people would go, "No, dumb ass, don't walk through here because, you know, this thing moves and crushes." No, what happens? Some poor bastard gets squished in it. And now they're dealing with it. And that's a case in point where you couldn't have put him in enough PPE to keep him out of harm's way.

Fred R.:

Yeah.

Dave W.:

So, again, going back to the, you know, I would say probably [inaudible 00:13:06] let's go 80% just [inaudible 00:13:09] 80% of the PPE that people are wearing wouldn't be needed if people would just pay attention to the front end of processes when they're designing stuff.

Fred R.:

Right.

Dave W.:

And that's not good for us to say because that's how we make a living, but that's the truth of the matter.

Fred R.:

Yeah.

Dave W.:

Is doing that front end engineering of the process and putting controls in place are really the safest long-term ... that's where you get your payoff long-term. But we don't do that because we don't involve, again, those people who are in risk management or safety a lot of times in front end of things. It's starting to happen a little bit more and more now, but we also have structures and facilities and plants all over the place that have never had any of that methodology put in place.

Fred R.:

Do you have any examples of ways that the hazard might be engineered completely out? [crosstalk 00:14:24] There's safeguards, and then there's a way to completely get it so it's like, we don't have to do that job because of something that maybe [crosstalk 00:14:30]

Dave W.:

Yeah, well like a classic example there can be fume extractors or utilizing systems that push air, move air, so that if you're not subjecting somebody to the fume of whatever because you're actually pushing it out of the building, you know. You don't all of a sudden have somebody that has to wear a respirator. Granted you gotta make sure that there's not still and exposure, that somehow something's not messed up, but, that's a case in point where looking at this guy doing this, and all we need to do is ... let's say, silica's big out there, and when kinda read through the standard on silica, part of that is ...

Fred R.:

Dick with your phone.

Dave W.:

Yeah, [inaudible 00:15:25] never shuts up. There's an appendix that tells you how you can safely perform tasks, and one of the main things in there is using a wet cut. So, I mean everybody has driven past the guy has like, not any high vis, he has an orange shirt that it looks like he wiped his ass with and has washed it, or he doesn't have it on and it looks like their skin is leather and they have that big concrete cutting saw and they put it down and just dust and shit is going everywhere.

Fred R.:

Well you've driven through it, like, just been, like on the highway [crosstalk 00:16:21] breathe it through your car.

Dave W.:

You have this waft and you sit there and you go, realistically somebody could have rigged up a damn water hose just to put water on that cut and all of a sudden we don't have that same hazard that we had, and all it was is water.

Fred R.:

Right.

Dave W.:

Because the silica doesn't have a chance to get airborne, it gets stuck in the water and it stays there.

Fred R.:

Yeah, I think sometimes that word PPE guys, so when I started hearing about the silica standards and all this stuff changing, my mind immediately goes to, "Alright, well we're gonna be selling more PPE in regards to this stuff." And as you kinda delve into it a little bit more, it's more of an engineering thing like, yes, there are still applications where they're gonna create this dust and they need to wear something respiratory.

Dave W.:

Yeah there's the whole line of people that are walking out there that are exposed that don't have the personal protection equipment.

Fred R.:

Right.

Dave W.:

But of those, at least half of those guys, if they bought vacuum ... like there's different vacuums out there with attachments that they can put to the [inaudible 00:17:36] that vacuum that shit out of ... then you don't need anything.

Fred R.:

Yeah. So. That is a thing, though that a lot of times a safety guy will think, "Alright, here's the hazard, here's how I can protect them with PPE, or here's what happened to this guy and here's what could have prevented that in regards to PPE." [crosstalk 00:17:59]

Dave W.:

It's gonna challenge ourselves to go all the way back and go, "Number one, do we need to do that?"

Fred R.:

Right. We're wearing a cut resistant glove right now, but we got a cut that went through the glove so let's get a higher cut resistant glove instead of looking at the knife that you're reusing ...

Dave W.:

And all of a sudden you realize that, oh man if we just had an auto-retracting knife ...

Fred R.:

Yeah. Or cut level three, might do the job then instead of going to cut level nine.

Dave W.:

Yeah. And then all of a sudden [crosstalk 00:18:29] yeah and the cut level nine then all of a sudden everybody has issues with their hands because there's no dexterity in the glove.

Fred R.:

Yep.

Dave W.:

Or they take their glove off because they can't do their job with their glove on.

Fred R.:

Alright, so we're gonna move on to our  Dumb Ass of the Week this week. And I'm gonna call this guy Tough Guy Tommy. I don't know, anyways. Run in to these guys a lot [crosstalk 00:19:06]

Dave W.:

At least Tough Guy Tommy's a creative guy.

Fred R.:

I don't know what that means.

Dave W.:

Well, because of the premise he's created. He doesn't just, you know ...

Fred R.:

So, anyways, he is someone that got a pretty gnarly cut at work, so he was working stocking shelves or cutting boxes up and he dashed his hand pretty good but at the end of the month, they're gonna reach their 100 days, 100 days accident free. And they're gonna have a barbecue where they get hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch that day. And so Tough Guy Tommy just wraps up his hand where he probably should have gotten some stitches, wraps up his hand and goes back to work because he doesn't want to report anything because he wants everyone to be able to get their hot dogs at the end of the month.

Dave W.:

Doesn't want everybody to give him a bunch of shit over hot dogs.

Fred R.:

Yeah for being a real pussy, just wrap your hand up. So, a few days goes by you start noticing old Tough Guy Tommy is still wearing his wrap on his hand and then another couple weeks go by and he's still wearing a wrap on his hand to protect and you go, "Hey man, what's going on with your hand?" And he takes it off, and the cut's infected. So now he's got a much bigger problem than if he just would have reported it in the first place. And I think that happens a lot, like, when they have rewards systems for not having accidents.

Dave W.:

Yeah, well you get the anti-behavior [crosstalk 00:20:33] Is, people get so worried about a safety bonus or whatever, that it's sometimes it's that, mob mentality is not what I'm looking for, but you're the one out of a hundred that's gonna keep the other 99 from getting their hot dog, you have some emotional fear to not report, and not reporting ... You know, I think I was reading it somewhere, it talks about the cost of work comp, you know, workers' compensation claim, and the whole premise of the article was the sooner you report it, the lower that is in total cost. And they said something to the fact that accidents not reported within 48 hours, the end cost of a similar accident is about 25% more.

And, that can be a hundred different ways from Sunday, maybe it's because it was just a basic cut that if he went into the clinic and got stitched up, he would be fine, versus maybe we turn around in the other instance, you know, it's infected and let's say it's gotten to the point where it's like semi-gangrene, you know, kinda has a stench and they're thinking about cutting [crosstalk 00:22:07] oh we may have to cut him off at the wrist. So, you know, claim A versus claim B is completely different. And the only thing that was different was that we identified that something happened, this world's gotta get over the fact that we should be able to open and talk about stuff.

You know, it's just like near misses, a lot of people, no one wants to talk about a near miss. I would probably say have a hot dog when somebody comes up and goes, "You know what, I almost bashed my fucking head in.", and then everybody goes ...

Fred R.:

"I did that, too."

Dave W.:

Yeah. "I did that, too." And then, how do we fix that and let's sit down and eat hot dogs and talk about how we don't do this collectively, instead of, "Okay, we're gonna give you a hot dog as long as you don't tell anybody that you got hurt and try to act safe and wear your safety shirts." And you know ...

Fred R.:

Put a sticker on your hard hat.

Dave W.:

Yeah. Safe, safe, safe, safe. Instead of just going, shit happens, we need to be open, we need to talk about it, if somebody has a near miss. Celebrate the fact that they're willing to come out and tell other people, "I was a dumb ass and I did this. I was doing this job and I didn't get the amount of sleep that I should have. I need to be aware of it and everybody else needs to be aware that you've gotta pay attention when you're on that thing, 'cause I almost crushed Billy. I was this close to crushing Billy."

Fred R.:

Yeah.

Dave W.:

And celebrate that and talk about it.

Fred R.:

I do [crosstalk 00:23:49] sometimes someone gets hurt, and they get hurt doing something that you wouldn't have even realized is a hazard until it happens. It's like if that person shuts up and doesn't say anything about it, the next person can go and do the same thing.

Dave W.:

You lose the knowledge.

Fred R.:

Yeah.

Dave W.:

It's almost like scientific discovery, like you're literally like, "There's Bigfoot." But, "Shh, don't tell nobody."

Fred R.:

Yeah.

Dave W.:

And then I never get my Bigfoot sighting.

Fred R.:

It's gonna haunt you 'til the day you die.

Dave W.:

Yeah. It's gonna ruin my life.

Fred R.:

So, what the old tough guy should have really done was report his injury right away, he takes it to his safety people, or his risk people, or his HR manager, and say, "Hey, this happened today, I think I need to get stitches." They're gonna snap into action when that happens, because [crosstalk 00:24:40]

Dave W.:

Nobody's gonna be overly happy.

Fred R.:

Right.

Dave W.:

And that's not on the person that got hurt. If somebody's not happy, that should be on the management of the safety team because realistically they need to address what happened because let's say it was ignorance, let's say it was lack of training, let's say it was wrong PPE, let's say it was no PPE. We have a known variable then we can figure out how we do make it safe, you know, maybe we just go, "Scrap that, to hell with that, we're gonna reinvent what we're doing, and we're gonna do some hazard analysis or shadowing, let me watch how you do this because I'm missing something."

Fred R.:

Yeah.

Dave W.:

That's a lot of times the problem, is somebody goes, "I'm doing this." We'll have people call all the time and think that they can just say, "I'm doing these things." And they read you these three sentences off, and it's like, no, I hate to say this but I really need to come see what you're doing because I hear what you're telling me, but obviously if somebody can get hurt, I wanna make sure I understand, "Well, I didn't realize that press was a ten ton press, and you told me that you were worried about handling parts and there's a pinch hazard that will literally take your arm off and you never even mentioned that.

Fred R.:

Yeah. I guess, we just gotta not be afraid to look out for our own safety, and your buddy, you see [crosstalk 00:26:30] dripping blood down their hands.

Dave W.:

And safety managers have to champion those people, and I think too often they put the stupidest labels on shit. And once you put a label ... whistle blower. I mean, nobody wants to be a whistle blower. We have this hood mentality that's like, whoever's in charge, us street people should never ... don't tell the police, screw the police, and that's a horrible mentality to create.

Fred R.:

Yeah. Alright, we're gonna get past that and move on to some email questions for this week. Number one. I got, "What's the difference between qualitative and quantitative fit testing?"

Dave W.:

Quite a bit. So, quantitative, we just have to think about numbers, so, quantitative requires a quantitative fit tester, which is, kind of a high ticket item, they're not cheap. But it's really kinda measuring at a particle level what the fit factor of respirator is. So, when we put a respirator on, basically, and again, this is a filtering face piece, the key word there is filtering face piece, so we're not providing an atmosphere, we are trying to cleanse an atmosphere, so if we've done our homework and we've figured out what we're subjected to, whether it's gases, vapors, particulates, we've sat down and figured out and then we've gone back and we've figured out how much we can have. And then we have to figure out what our exposure is, and from there then, so most of your half face or disposable respirators have an APF of ten, so an assigned protection factor of ten.

So, what that will tell you is if you went out there and it says, "Hey, you can have an exposure of nine, parts per million, for instance, and all of a sudden you sit there and you look at your lab data comes back and says there are 90 parts per million in the air. Okay? So, we would take that 90 and divide it by ten, because we get the fit factor of ten, so we're cutting that down to nine, and all of a sudden we go, "Oh, we were in an environment of nine (b). We could have nine, and with an APF of ten, we could get there. But let's say all of a sudden there's 500 parts per million out there. Well, no, because then if we apply our fit factor of ten, we would still have 50 that we're theoretically getting.

Fred R.:

I'm gonna stop you right there, real quick. Make sure that everybody who's in their car driving rolls down the windows and feel that air blowing into your face, maybe start putting a pin needle, I know what we're getting a little bit, quite a few numbers, so everyone keep that car on the road. Don't smash it into a building.

Dave W.:

I got off on a [crosstalk 00:30:06] Jesus. But, quantitative fit testing figures out what specifically that number is. Versus qualitative ... well, "Here, you can taste this, right?" "Yeah." "Now I'm just gonna kinda squirt it around your face and since NIOSH approved the respirator, you get ten. As long as you pass the test, you get ten. And the problem is it's a subjective test.

Fred R.:

Right.

Dave W.:

So if you get some dumb ass that's not paying attention and goes, "Yeah, I'm good." And the whole time he's tasting the bitrex or the banana oil, then you're not doing anything. You can't really fake a quantitative 'cause there's a computer measuring. And you can get a higher fit factor, even though you're not necessarily=y gonna use it. You have a more scientific approach with a quantitative than a qualitative.

Fred R.:

I think to the contrary, too, just like someone will be able to taste that stuff the whole time, and they'll be like, "No, I don't taste it, no, I'm good." Or they're just lying 'cause they want to go back to work. You also get the guy that's like, somehow he always takes it. He might've had an adjustment on a face piece, and then that stuff is in his mouth. And then you readjust it and you test 'em again, and he still tastes it [crosstalk 00:31:30]

Dave W.:

There's a hundred which ways ...

Fred R.:

He's got a furry little mustache that he doesn't think is breaking his seal but it [crosstalk 00:31:38]

Dave W.:

You see these guys, you know, that got a Ulysses S Grant Civil War beard and they show up to the job site and the first thing somebody's telling 'em is, "You need to cut your beard."

Fred R.:

Right. And then sometimes they'll put on the fit test to spray the stuff and I'm sure it's caught in their beard, or caught in their mustache, and they're not tasting it. "No, it's fine, it's working." Yeah I've gotten some arguments with some people.

Dave W.:

Yeah.

Fred R.:

Your boss probably should have told you that you need to shave before even coming in here, don't make me be the bad guy. I'll be the bad guy, I don't have a problem doing that. Anyways, so, one, is ...

Dave W.:

Sorry, I went down a rabbit hole on that.

Fred R.:

It's all good. One's basic computers measuring it, and the other is just more of a generic, putting on a hood, and spraying some solution and seeing if you can taste it. It's a pass/fail.

Dave W.:

It's a pass/fail.

Fred R.:

Number two. If an employee wears eyeglasses, is that sufficient for eye protection?

Dave W.:

Depends if it's rate.

Fred R.:

Okay. So if they wear their regular pair of Ray Ban glasses that they got at the eye doctor, that would have to be [crosstalk 00:32:54]

Dave W.:

They're gonna have to go, they're gonna need to tell their optician or whoever's grinding 'em down, or whatever, "Hey, I need a safety lens in this." Because from the principle, something's better than nothing, okay, but we're supposed to be kinda a safety podcast, here.

Fred R.:

Yeah.

Dave W.:

So, with that said, is making sure that you have something that has that impact standard. So [inaudible 00:33:25] because it's a system.

Fred R.:

Right.

Dave W.:

So it's not necessarily just the lens, it has to be tested as a system. So it's the lens and the frame. So it's not like you just go, "Lens, is good." You know, you don't like safety glasses with those aviator, real skinny ass aviator frames.

Fred R.:

Yeah.

Dave W.:

So, yeah.

Fred R.:

You don't see the John Lennon, two little circle safety glasses.

Dave W.:

Yeah. So, there's something there to ... it's a little bit more complicated than going, "I have a barrier between my eye and whatever the hazard."

Fred R.:

I'm wearing my Lisa Loeb glasses.

Dave W.:

Lisa Loeb? Love Lisa Loeb.

Fred R.:

Anyways, so.

Dave W.:

Saw her years ago, man she could [inaudible 00:34:20] She sang a little song about pancakes. She's got like a whole catalog of when had kids, and she go out of the mainstream, she started doing kids albums, and it's been a couple years that I saw, but she sang this song about a friendly pancake and it was pretty good.

Fred R.:

It was moving?

Dave W.:

Yeah, it was like, "I didn't hate that." It was like a nursery rhyme kinda thing.

Fred R.:

Yeah if you put that down on a CD, I'll pick it up.

Dave W.:

Yeah.

Fred R.:

Alright, number three. When is it okay to wear a bump cap instead of a hard hat?

Dave W.:

Man, there's a case for bump caps, and I get it. So, a bump cap is going to be tighter fitting, it's arguably maybe a little more comfortable. But, at the end of the day, it's not rated for impact. So if there's a chance that something is falling, and I mean, that's why you wear a hard hat, you have the potential of a material that's falling from a different height, or a different floor, height, whatever you wanna call it. From above you.

Fred R.:

Yeah.

Dave W.:

You need to have a hard hat. But, let's say I have no potential hazard that way, but let's say I'm gonna crawl into a crawl space, I'm Joe Termite Guy, and I have to get under here and there's floor joists and I just wanna make sure I don't bust my head open. And as I'm commando crawling with my bucket of termite juice, that's a case where you could go, "Bump cap might make sense."

Fred R.:

Maybe like a mechanic [inaudible 00:36:23] tight spaces.

Dave W.:

Yeah. Tighter spaces, where you have the potential to have something not necessarily strike you, but somewhere where you might strike your head against something.

Fred R.:

Okay. I mean, almost simple. A hard hat is designed to protect something from falling on your head. And a bump cap is designed for you to bump your head on something.

Dave W.:

Yes. Key word being bump.

Fred R.:

Right

Dave W.:

Yeah.

Fred R.:

Not crush your skull.

Dave W.:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Fred R.:

Alright, that wraps up the email questions. I was gonna move on to a couple weeks ago, somehow I started getting Sports Illustrated. I honestly, I'm not subscribed to Sports Illustrated, they have not gotten any money from me.

Dave W.:

Somehow they know something, though.

Fred R.:

Yeah, I think from time to time, some of these magazines that are probably struggling in the new age of everything being online, they've started wrapping their subscriptions into other things. So at one point I ordered a golf club from a website on New Driver and it was like, "Any hundred dollar purchase that you made with them, came with a free subscription to a golf magazine. And it would be automatic, it wasn't like you signed up for it, I gave them my ship to, to ship my golf club to, I'm also now enrolled in golf magazine, so I got it for a year. So I'm assuming something like that happened with Sports Illustrated, where I bought something, I signed up for something, or maybe somebody gifted it to ... They're like, you buy one Sports Illustrated, you get one free for a friend. They didn't tell me about it. But anyways. Started getting Sports Illustrated, and been since probably high school that I've gotten an old swimsuit issue.

Dave W.:

Like the Kathy Ireland one?

Fred R.:

Yeah. So, this one's got Danielle Harrington, so it's about right my speed, so. I wouldn't turn her away at an Old Country Buffet. If she came walking up to me and said, "Hey, is this seat taken?" I'd say, "That seat's not taken." If my wife's in that seat, I'm sorry, but she'll come back and she'll understand. But anyways, on the front cover, you've got very sexy pose, here, of [crosstalk 00:38:44] the water's splashing on her, so, but on the back cover is a Snicker's add for the swimsuit issue. And it says, "The goddesses of asbestos removal." It's a woman wearing a Tyvek suit with a bikini over the top of it. So it says, these hot newcomers barred it all inside of polypropylene hazmat suits. From respirators to disposable coveralls, this year's sexiest safety equipment. So Dave sparked something in my head, and we did it in an episode last season, but I'm gonna take you back into the shark tank. Or we'll call it the pig tank, where I'm gonna give you a couple pitches on some different products, and you can yay or nay and tell me if you'd like to invest.

Dave W.:

So am I being a Mark Cuban, or am I being Mr. Wonderful?

Fred R.:

QVC lady, or I see you more as Fubu, you're the Fubu guy.

Dave W.:

Okay.

Fred R.:

So anyways, my number one was, rubber tight chemical suits. So you see a lot of that, when somebody's dressed like a super villain, like the X Men, it's like a nice tight suit. So, like a skin tight rubber chemical suit. What do you think?

Dave W.:

I'm probably not gonna buy that because I'm just envisioning most of the guys that I've seen in those plants, I can't imagine that would be attractive.

Fred R.:

I don't think it's for everybody, just like maybe a bikini doesn't look good on everybody, I don't wanna see you in a pair of European speedos out there, running around, so, maybe some board shorts. There would be different options, but for the right person?

Dave W.:

Yeah I guess.

Fred R.:

Trying to be sexy. Okay, so pass on that one.

Dave W.:

Yeah.

Fred R.:

Alright. S&M fall restraint.

Dave W.:

I think you've got something here. I'm gonna make you an offer. 'Cause you know, at some point in time, somebody was hanging from the ceiling, kinda the superman thing, oh shit, somehow I fell out of whatever [crosstalk 00:40:55]

Fred R.:

Instead of handcuffs or something, you've got some sort of fall restraint. Like, the two foot lanyard, keeping them from getting out of where they need to be.

Dave W.:

They never said anything 'cause they had a ball in their [crosstalk 00:41:05]

Fred R.:

Or, for the same type of situation, you might need some blower fans that would start pushing into that, to kind of keep some of the aromas outta there, or keep it cooler. Alright, you're passing on the blower fans. How about clear rain gear? You like that? So you're in some situations where you're trying to be sexy, you're trying to flaunt what you've got, but you don't want that yellow suit, so if you put on something clear and plastic, you can really see what's going on underneath.

Dave W.:

Yeah, I mean, maybe ...

Fred R.:

Your fireman calendar. I don't know, I got some ideas. How about, you've seen like the eyewash station that you run through and you pull the chain?

Dave W.:

Yeah.

Fred R.:

If you've got a real flash dance situation, just for the right moment, you sprint over and you ...

Dave W.:

I can see that.

Fred R.:

You cool off.

Dave W.:

I'm surprised somebody hasn't maybe tried to mimic that [crosstalk 00:42:00]

Fred R.:

We can do it. Coming soon to quadcitysafety.com, or the YouTube page.

Dave W.:

Sit on the chair [crosstalk 00:42:07]

Fred R.:

For fifteen minutes of continuous flow.

Dave W.:

With tepid water.

Fred R.:

Yeah. And then I'm thinking a balaclava wig.

Dave W.:

That one, I really like. Because you'll see where it's like the guy that's in his late 40s and he's got his team colors on and he's bald but he has the team colors in his wig, so I could really see a balaclava with that, with the wig over it. Like, "I came to wire, but I also came to party."

Fred R.:

Right. You've got, like, long flowing blonde hair, or a mullet, or something like that that's built into your balaclava. So, that one's a winner. So we have a couple winners, a few losers, but we'll bring it back at some point. Anyways, I think that's enough for us this week. So, I don't know what you guys think, but hopefully we're looking to get some reviews on iTunes, so if you could rate and review us on iTunes. Send us an email or social media comment.

Dave W.:

And I promise if I see you've reviewed something, we'll send you some swag, something that's fun and entertaining, I guarantee.

Fred R.:

Yeah.

Dave W.:

I guarantee. He was like, the ...

Fred R.:

Oh, Men's Warehouse? You're gonna like the way you look, I'll guarantee it?

Dave W.:

No no no, he was like the Justin Wilson, he was like the old, he had a cooking show, back, you probably weren't even born yet but he would tell stories and cook, and he was from the bayou, so he kinda spoke broken French American, every time he'd go, "That tastes good, I guarantee."

Fred R.:

Okay. So we'll send some safety swag so we even have some actual bacon [crosstalk 00:44:13]

Dave W.:

Yes we do. Candied bacon.

Fred R.:

Or we'll find some other random shit, just to throw in a bag and we'll ship it your way.

Dave W.:

Yeah.

Fred R.:

Yeah, either way, so. If you're not tired of us yet, come back next week, we'll be here. Safety's a really important topic, but a lot of people aren't talking about it like it is, so, we're still hoping on changing that. So, thank you guys, once again, for listening. So yeah. Look us up, give us questions if you have them, and we'll keep these conversations going, so. Once again, safety has no quit time, and we'll see you next week.

Dave W.:

Later.

Fred R.:

Alright, thanks.

Narrator:

Thanks for listening into 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 at quadcitysafety.com. He's the guy keeping this mess of a show in line. And, 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.