Intro Speaker:

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

Fred Radunzel:

Alright, everybody. Welcome back to another episode or installment of Dave and Bacon Safety Tales coming live from Omaha, Nebraska.

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

They're having the Big Ten baseball tournament right here, so staying in our hotel we've seen Purdue; we've seen Iowa, my fave; and we've seen Indiana; we've seen Illinois.

Dave White:

So this is everywhere.

Fred Radunzel:

That's about all I've seen but there's buses everywhere and lots of ...

Dave White:

And, believe it or not, in Omaha, Nebreaska, it's almost sweaty. It's got a humid, nasty ...

Fred Radunzel:

A little steamy.

Dave White:

A little sticky.

Fred Radunzel:

But anyways, so, this is gonna be episode one of two of the Omaha series, which we haven't done. Thank you guys once again for coming back. Really appreciate you guys listening to the episodes. A lot of the feedback that we've gotten, we've heard a lot of positive feedback from people. We really appreciate that, so please continue to reach out to us, whether it's email, you can go to me at fred@quadcitysafety.com. Dave White and I are both on LinkedIn. I'm on Twitter, Quad City Safety's on Twitter, we're on Facebook, so hit us up on any of the social media platforms and feel free to reach out if you guys have any questions or comments or anything you'd like to address on the show or further expand on, we would love to hear from you and love to continue that conversation.

Today, kind of our plan was pick a couple of topics we haven't really hit on much, kinda mold them into one episode that kinda fit in the same semi-family. A lot of manufacturers work in both, so we're gonna talk a little bit about flammable cabinets, and then I'm thinking about spill containment and sorbents.

Dave White:

Either how to keep it or, "Oh shit, we spilled it, we spilled, we got it on the floor, now we've gotta get it up and get rid of it."

Fred Radunzel:

We don't have enough content to fill out an episode on both of them but we figured we'll knock them both in the episode and we'll kinda ...

Dave White:

Yeah, let's tell them why we're here.

Fred Radunzel:

Why are we here? Oh are we here for the rail show?

Dave White:

We're here for the rail show, so we're hanging out with all of our rail peeps, whether it's BNSF, United Pacific, and [inaudible 00:02:31] Union Pacific, but what's amazing, we spent the whole day sitting there watching the fact that there's a whole industry and the industry that we are watching are just people that are really around control systems for roads that go through railway passages, so it's all those little ding-dong arms and stuff going down, you know, "ding ding ding ding ding ding," those wavering lights and everything, but as we look at safety, I think a lot of times we get compartmentalized and we don't think about the fact that there's a lot of stuff.

Safety is a really big industry. It reaches into a lot of different things, and so we're here in Omaha, we're going to talk about sorbents and flammable cabinets, but we spent a while day with ... How big? I mean that show was huge, it was a whole convention center here that ... Which one was it, the ...

Fred Radunzel:

CenturyLink.

Dave White:

CenturyLink ...

Fred Radunzel:

Arena.

Dave White:

Arena.

Fred Radunzel:

I think it's where Creighton plays basketball.

Dave White:

Okay, but you sit there and you're like, "Holy crap," you walk through it and you're like, "I had no idea that there was this many people trying to make sure that, you know, you see it on the evening news every now and then where some dumb a** gets T-boned in an intersection because usually he's trying to go around it, but there's a whole damn industry trying to keep people from dying this way, so safety has no quitting time.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah, I think we'll get, in another episode too, I think in episode two of the Omaha series, we'll get into a little bit of some things that we've found, a little bit at the trade show today, some interesting things that we saw, maybe.

So, one thing, when we're talking about sorbents, that kinda came to mind as a good story to get into it is you and I are both fathers.

Dave White:

Oh my goodness.

Fred Radunzel:

And so, the absorbent level that happens with a diaper, and, we each have like a million stories, but the first thing ...

Dave White:

But you have to really look at the same thing is kids, is ... kinda like if you're addressing an industrial spill, you have to ... kids ...

Fred Radunzel:

Oh there's some industrial spills going down.

Dave White:

In the way that kids, whether they shit it up, puke it up, whatever it is, there's different ways to handle it. You need different absorbent materials to pick it up, you need different pee pee to where, you know ...

Fred Radunzel:

Depending on the consistency. Paper towels might not cut it.

Dave White:

Oh my goodness. And how it goes down. I look back and probably some of the worst children's spills I ever dealt with was when a child's butt is compressed to a car seat, and so it ...

Fred Radunzel:

Takes out the room for air?

Dave White:

No, well, it redirects everything. So, what would've been just a diaper spill becomes all the way up the back ...

Fred Radunzel:

Touching their rat tail.

Dave White:

Into their hair, you know. Then, all of a sudden, we go from just kind of a containment issue into an abatement issue so instead of just putting a boom around it and keeping the shit all in one place, we end up with holy crap we have shit everywhere and we have to quarantine the area, we have to dig soil out three quarters of an inch deep, literally like you're tearing the baby's seat. You ever try to do that?

Fred Radunzel:

Oh yeah, we've had one that you cannot take apart, you cannot take it apart. You have to spot clean that thing. It will not come apart.

Dave White:

Oh that's awful.

Fred Radunzel:

The padding will become [crosstalk 00:06:17] if you take it apart.

Dave White:

I guess now that you say that, we did. Those little booster chair ones or whatever, never had kind of like ... So if somebody took a dump or fell asleep, pissed themselves, you had pretty much ... I ended up throwing them away because it's like, "What the hell do you do with this?"

Fred Radunzel:

Light it on fire.

Dave White:

I'm not gonna put it in the dryer.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah, we had a good diaper that we took Hudson in for swimming lessons, my two year old son. This was about when he was 18 months old, swimming lessons and we didn't have a swim diaper, so we just rolled the dice and took him there in a regular diaper and you find out how quickly those things ... It can absorb a lot, but when it gives, it gives.

I've also put one in a washing machine before, where a diaper accidentally, like not a dirty diaper, but one of our other ones that snuck in.

Dave White:

No, I don't think I've ever tried to do that.

Fred Radunzel:

It snuck in with our laundry.

Dave White:

Holy s***.

Fred Radunzel:

And then it explodes.

Dave White:

Oh so, it's just got that s*** everywhere.

Fred Radunzel:

You've got little confetti or whatever those little particles in there that absorb all the material.

Dave White:

Cellulose matter or whatever.

Fred Radunzel:

Whatever it is, when they get soaking wet, and just mess the inside of a washing machine, it's a disaster to clean up, but ...

Dave White:

Holy s***, I've never been had that one happen.

Fred Radunzel:

Yep, so it snuck in, but I definitely had the car seat, you're out shopping, and the kid's sitting there and all of a sudden you start hearing those bubbles. The bubble guts start raining its way up and all of a sudden it's a mess and you're throwing this away. There's no cleaning this, we've gotta get home and we've gotta get home now.

Dave White:

Yeah and it's usually like, "Okay, I'm gonna set you in the shower, just don't freak out. Take your clothes off. Throw them over here. Let's throw that shit away, 'cause that's not worth dealing with."

Fred Radunzel:

I'm not putting it right into the washing machine, gonna go ahead and take care of it, but there are a million of those type of things that go down when you're running that dad game, so ...

Alright, well let's start there, then. Let's talk sorbents a little bit. Do you wanna hit off with, first off, maybe some different types?

Dave White:

So, when you look at sorbents, there's different colors and usually the color means things, but there's primarily two ways that it's gonna go. One, it's gonna be a universal, which means that it's like a diaper. Doesn't matter whether it's crap or piss, it's ...

Fred Radunzel:

You know what, before we even get there, it just came to mind, when I first started in kinda this entry six years ago, the word sorbent didn't mean anything to me. So, by itself, it's ...

Dave White:

Well it's because we've taken absorbent out of it.

Fred Radunzel:

Are you aware of any reason why isn't it absorbent?

Dave White:

'Cause people are lazy.

Fred Radunzel:

Is that all it is?

Dave White:

It's an extra syllable.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay, fair enough, so a sorbent is something that's going to absorb something.

Dave White:

So absorbs stuff, absorbent.

Fred Radunzel:

Alright, go ahead.

Dave White:

So, when we look at it, it's like two things that it's gonna be. It's either gonna be a universal or the other way is oil-only. So when we talk about a universal, typically, those are gray, so when you look at the pad, it'll just kinda have a gray color on it, a gray cover that tells you it doesn't matter whether it's oil, doesn't matter whether it's water, it doesn't care whether it's crap or it's urine or whatever the hell it is. If it's got moisture or anything in it, it's gonna pull that into it. And that's exactly what it does, is it soaks it up and a good sorbent should actually hold it, so it should pull it in to ...

You know, there's cheap sorbents out there that are nothing more than a glorified cotton T-shirt so you gotta wipe everything up and when you hold it, it drips. A good sorbent should actually hold that.

Versus an oil-only, which will be white. A lot of those are white, so the white ones are typically what's called hydrophobic. Hydrophobic means, "I am scared of water, so I don't wanna suck water. Let's go back to ... What was that dumb ass's name, Valdez?

Fred Radunzel:

Exxon?

Dave White:

Yeah, he was s***-faced drunk and crashed a boat and the whole Green Peace bunch of fucking people went nuts and tried to wash birds off or whatever, but the whole thing was all of a sudden you have oil slicks on water and you've got to try to get this up.

Fred Radunzel:

Get rid of just the oil.

Dave White:

Well, if you try to do it with a universal, and you put that out there, you would ... and water would no longer have any moisture in it or oil, you would suck everything out of it. A lot of times when you'll see like ...

Well, we're at a rail show and you'll have rail cars crash and it'll be a tanker truck that's got probably something that's petroleum based, and then when you look at the sorbents a lot of times, the sorbents that'll be sitting on the water will be white, and that's because they're trying to contain that oil, 'cause obviously oil will separate from water and rise on top, so an oil-only will only suck that oil up.

Other types that are out there, as you know, a lot of times they'll call it a hazmat and sometimes they're yellow, sometimes they're pink, they're usually an off color, but those are usually a universal, but the reason that they kinda do that or put them as a different color is if you're sucking up a chemical that you don't really know what it is, you don't wanna cross-contaminate it or put it with something else 'cause you don't know how it's gonna respond to it.

Fred Radunzel:

But most of these are all pads, basically, that we're talking? Pads or almost like towels? So it's like a thicker, absorbent towel?

Dave White:

When you look at sorbents, you'll have pads. A pad is like toilet paper. It can be a continuous roll or it can be a perf roll, it can be a thin roll, it can be a wide roll. A lot of rolls will be 36 inches or they'll be perfed so many feet or they can be a continuous roll.

Fred Radunzel:

Right, like a maxi pad.

Dave White:

Yep, then you can have ... Well, a maxi pad would be to me what I call truly a pad or a pillow, so it's literally like a pillow, so that if you have, like, "Oh we have a really bad spill in a contained area and we just soak that up," you may put a pillow there. Sometimes it'll be called pigs or socks, so those are, a sock, imagine just filling a sock with ...

Fred Radunzel:

It's like a sausage.

Dave White:

Yep. And that's really meant to contain, so you're gonna wrap that around. There's different configurations of them.

Fred Radunzel:

Some of that would be like, “We need to keep the stuff out of a hole. There's a hole in the ground, our dangerous stuff can't go into that hole."

Dave White:

You're not gonna do that with a sorbent, you're gonna do that with potentially a drain plug or you may take a sock and wrap a sock around it so it doesn't go into it, but you're not gonna stuff that down the hole. The whole goal is, “Holy s***, we rammed a forklift into this, and the drain's over here and the drain goes to Nemo's house. How do we keep Nemo from drinking whatever the hell it is?” Well, we're trying to keep it out of our ground water.

Fred Radunzel:

Maybe the most common sorbent that's out there that people are still using is basically kitty litter type stuff, it's considered a sorbent, right?

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

So there's even technology that's kinda changed in kitty litter style sorbents where you're just throwing a bunch of stuff on the ground and absorbing ...

Dave White:

There's a Magic Monkey in ... What's it called, it's uh ... Stardust. They're this super absorbent material. Some of them come in puke kits. You sprinkle it over the top of it and it almost curdles itself up, then you kinda sweep it up, but a lot of the better materials that are out there are getting away from the dripping factor. But yeah, like the kitty litters or the ...

Fred Radunzel:

'Cause I would still say you say "sorbents" to most people and that's what comes to their mind is, "Oh yeah we have sorbents, we have two bags of this kitty litter stuff that we pour on our spill and makes a bigger mess than we were trying to ...

Dave White:

You have to sweep it up, it's heavy.

Fred Radunzel:

It's like 50 pound bags.

Dave White:

Then you have to dispose of it. So, you can get probably twice the absorbency in like a tenth of the weight, and we all know other than Amazon free shipping, everything costs a little bit of money to get to wherever you're trying to do it at.

Fred Radunzel:

So if you can get a much smaller bag it almost feels like it's filled with sawdust or ripped up newspaper and you put this stuff on the ground [crosstalk 00:16:04].

Dave White:

There's a whole generation of material that's out there, like one of the products that's out there is called ColdForm and it's regenerated cotton, basically, so they take the old cotton stuff and they tear it up and they weave it in there, so there's some green reconstituted products, where it's the second life of whatever it was originally done.

Fred Radunzel:

Kinda like that SpillFix stuff is?

Dave White:

Yeah, some of that stuff is ... I don't know exactly what the recipe for SpillFix is, but there's a lot of them out there that are kind of green hippie materials where in life one it was this and then ...

Fred Radunzel:

We're repurposing it.

Dave White:

And now in life two it is this.

Fred Radunzel:

To soak this up.

Dave White:

Yeah, we're gonna soak this up and then we're gonna throw it into a plastic base landfill.

Fred Radunzel:

But that is something that is, like ... There's lots of videos and lots of material on any of this sorbent stuff so if you have something that you're working with or a material that you work with, feel free to reach out to us, like I said, any of our social media stuff, or do the research yourself. Feel free to do that.

Dave White:

Sorbents is not that hard because the main thing you have to do is you gotta go, "What the hell are we gonna spill?" And then you have to go, "If we spill it, how much could we spill?" And then, the thing that people don't a lot of times wanna sit there and think about is, "If we spill it, where are we trying not to get it to?" If getting into berms and containment, so obviously if there's a river with fish, you know, Nemo's swimming in the river here, the whole goal is going to be to make sure that we don't get it there.

Fred Radunzel:

Maybe something to look out for would be if you're basically using still kitty litter type stuff, just know that that's not the only sorbent that's out there, that the technology has ...

Dave White:

Your wild wild west s***.

Fred Radunzel:

That the technology has advanced to where you don't have to wear this bulky leather glove anymore. There's something that's better, that's protecting you more than what that glove did and there's a product out there, probably, that isn't as cheap, or maybe in the long run it is cheaper.

Dave White:

It's probably not as cheap when you look at a bale of sorbents, which is a stack of them or a roll, you'll look at it and you'll go, "Whoa, that's more expensive." But then it gets in how much, you know, you take a bag of kitty litter, I don't know exactly how many gallons that it will suck up, but you'll be surprised at some of these sorbents when you get into a decent sorbent. It's crazy how much it will suck up and hold and then you can dispose of it, versus picking something up that's gonna hold it versus sweeping nasty, clay-based shit that still leaves a residue ...

Fred Radunzel:

Oh and the stink, a lot of times the really nice sorbents will take out some of that stink, they almost have a ...

Dave White:

But those are the ones that are holding it so it's not dripping all over the place.

Fred Radunzel:

Yep. So, that's our sorbent 101 little thing we did there. We can move on to some flammable cabinet type stuff, right?

Dave White:

Well we can, yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

Back to our earlier discussion about having baby diapers and those babies, they can also produce some flammable materials, you gotta have a way to store them. A wise man once told me when I had my first kid, it was a buddy of mine that had kids like two years [inaudible 00:19:53] of me. He was like, "Those Diaper Genies, don't do it. Get a trash can and when that thing starts stinking, you take the trash bag out and you throw it away. Don't waste your money on the Diaper Genie storage thing that's supposed to hide the stink."

Dave White:

I've heard two ways of going with that. So, obviously, did you get a Diaper Genie?

Fred Radunzel:

No. Always just been a trash can and, "It smells like poop in here, let's pick that bag up and we'll get it out of here."

Dave White:

'Cause I know that family friend or whatever, there's two ways that it goes, one is the daughter got into the Diaper Genie and fought one out, and then went completely ballistic in a room and smeared shit on her and everything, so that was nasty, but I've also seen people that have had Diaper Genies where you walk in there and you watch it and you're like, "That's pretty cool," as it kinda wads it up into a garbage bag and puts it down into abyss. I guess I had kids long enough ago that maybe they had them and we were just stupid.

Fred Radunzel:

Maybe you were a kitty litter guy.

Dave White:

Could've been. Probably would've been. Theoretically, I run a little bit behind times.

Fred Radunzel:

Kid pees on the floor, Dave just sprinkles some kitty litter on top of it and sweeps it up.

Dave White:

No no no no no, you go ... What the hell is that Adam Sandler movie?

Fred Radunzel:

Big Daddy?

Dave White:

Yeah, Big Daddy, where you just get some newspaper and throw it on there and then start talking about Scuba Steve.

Fred Radunzel:

We'll get into a little bit of the flammable cabinet topic. Where do you wanna start here? I guess, "All flammable and combustible liquids need to be stored."

Dave White:

Well it's just like when we were talking about sorbents is nothing in safety's completely brainiac, enough of it's common sense. When you're sitting there talking about storing chemicals, it's going, "What are trying to store?" And so, when you sit there and talk about a lot of times people get into "flammable," well yeah, obviously, anything that's flammable you need to store it, but there are storage situations for lab, there's storage situations for pesticides, so you can change between yellow to blue to ... There's different colors that give you the visual opportunity to understand what it is and why there's ...

Fred Radunzel:

Yellow's flammable, red's paints and combustible liquids, blue's corrosive and hazardous liquids, green's pesticides and insecticides, silver or naturals as laboratory settings in white, beige, or gray, says waste or outdoor lockers.

Dave White:

Yeah, but it gives you the ability to separate those, 'cause a lot of them you don't wanna put compound A with compound B. For instance, just Ry and some of the other guys that are out there, dealing with these containments, they'll come through and they'll take a liquid ... "What the hell are you ... What are you gonna put in there?" Because there's certain classes of stuff that you don't wanna put this with that, because that's a bad idea. The amount of stuff that you put into it in that obviously if it's combustible or flammable, those words mean stuff so everybody that's ever had some hairspray and a lighter understands, flammable or combustible is ... There's bad shit that if that triangle's completed, where we have oxygen and we have the matter that we need, all we need is ...

Fred Radunzel:

We're gonna go boom.

Dave White:

Yeah, we're gonna go boom at some point in time. And the whole goal with those cabinets is to try to keep it from going boom, but there's things that go into it in that obviously if the doors are wide open, that doesn't do any good. If we drill holes or we alter it, that doesn't do us any good. A lot of cases, hell, you even wanna ground the damn thing, you don't want that potential to do the Michael Jackson shuffle and ...

Everybody's rubbed their feet on the carpet and goes up and gives a little spark there and then static electricity spark and then see what happens. That's exactly how we complete that whole transaction to where we go boom.

Fred Radunzel:

Right, and they just have the little grounding nut that's on those cabinets usually is just all you gotta do is put your little thing in there and you're good to go pretty much, right? They usually have a little grounding nut on them?

Dave White:

Yeah, but I mean, it's just like a lightning rod is all it is. Electricity always, I don't understand it, I'm not that scientific guy, but it wants to go to ground. When they say that it physically wants to go into the ground, so a grounding clamp or a grounding, how to say ... Most people don't realize like a regular gasoline pump ... So, the gasoline pump that you pull up to, you're getting ready to get your pizza, your six pack of beer, and your pizza from old girl ...

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah, holler at old girl.

Dave White:

Yeah, you gotta holler at old girl, 'cause you're headed home, and most of those are grounded systems because any time you have friction, you create static electricity, so you pull the pump down there and that whole hose is a grounded system because it has liquids that are traveling through it, creating static electricity, and you have a flammable ... you know, gasoline's pretty flammable shit. So, those are even systems that are grounded.

Fred Radunzel:

With a satellite dish there was a grounding ... Drive a grounding rod into the ground or there's I think you hook up something to the electrical box [crosstalk 00:26:25].

Dave White:

A lot of times you'll pound kind of a steel-copper rod down ...

Fred Radunzel:

It's a metal stake, yeah.

Dave White:

And you'll take it a couple feet down and then all you have is a connecting thing that you put in there, so that when you touch it, all that electricity goes to ground.

Fred Radunzel:

Talk a little bit about the door design on top of these, if they have self-closing doors, what's a kind of benefit to that?

Dave White:

Well let's start with the legs. So, a lot of systems will sit on the ground and I'm the big ...

Fred Radunzel:

Leg man, you're big leg man.

Dave White:

The legs on these things are not that long, but any time you have a potential for water ... There's water everywhere, so a lot of these ... Usually flammable cabinets are not on the 250th floor, usually they're in a basement, they're in a garage, they're in somewhere that's gonna get water, well people buy them and they set them on the ground and over time the bottom of the damn things rust out. Legs cost you a little bit more, but obviously you don't rust out the bottom of the ...

Anything that we ever talk about with safety is a system, and so having some legs that keeps the bottom from rusting out, that's a good thing. Then the next thing, to me, becomes obviously do we have it grounded and how we connect that system up, followed by the doors. There's self-closing doors, so if I open it, it's kind of a counter-weighted system, so it's gonna naturally wanna close, versus a manual close. If you're walking through and someone goes and pulls something out of their locker, and they've got their jock strap hanging there, they're gonna have a manual closed door and you're gonna walk back and you're gonna be like, "Seriously dude, that's bad." And that's the same thing is maybe we should have ...

You're not even following me, are you?

Fred Radunzel:

Self-closing ...

Dave White:

No, everything in the gym's self-closing. Manual-closed doors in a gymnasium, you know, you're in a gym so you're gonna have to walk by and see people's s*** that you don't wanna see in there.

Fred Radunzel:

They don't have that option?

Dave White:

I've never seen that option.

Fred Radunzel:

No.

Dave White:

But there's basically self-closing doors that will keep you from having to sit there and walk up and kinda do the whole closing the old uh ... closet door or whatever.

Fred Radunzel:

Probably also we should talk about depending on where you're at in the country, whether earthquakes or tornadoes or hurricanes might be an issue in that you have to mount this thing somewhere so it needs to be maybe attached to a wall so that it doesn't tip over and all your dangerous shit's pouring out of there.

Dave White:

And usually there's brackets that come with most of this stuff and it's a classic example of RTFM.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay?

Dave White:

Read the f****** manual.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay [crosstalk 00:29:54].

Dave White:

As they say, instructions, always call them constructions because it's always stuff you have to put together. But everything always comes with kind of a book that'll tell you best practices there.

Fred Radunzel:

So, just in the little bit of research that I've done, it looks like there's different categories in regards to flammable liquids.

Dave White:

Oh yeah, there's ... I don't remember much.

Fred Radunzel:

Looks like I've got it right here. Category one: Flash points below 73.4 and boiling points at or below 95 degrees.

Dave White:

Well the flash point, here's where that comes in, let me kind of explain that, is ...

Fred Radunzel:

'cause I'm like, I don't even know, I've never even heard of these.

Dave White:

So flash point, so let's think about a flash point, what does flash point mean? So, everybody that knows about grilling out is going out there in the winter and they've sprayed the charcoal fluid on the charcoal and it's 30 degrees outside, it's cold as shit, and then you get the match going and you hold it up there and it barely lights. It takes it a while to basically light up.

Fred Radunzel:

They have to distribute.

Dave White:

Well then the dumb asses go out there in July, and it's July the 4th, and it's 150 fucking degrees and they put their lighter fluid out there, and then they do the same thing is they light the lighter and they almost get it close and then it goes, "WHOOF!"

Fred Radunzel:

And those guys are dumb a** of the week.

Dave White:

And next thing you know they don't have any knuckle or arm hair and I may or may not have done that. Well, that's flash point, is when you take a volatile organic compound and you change ... Well, it's not just BLCs, but ... and you change the temperature, then that changes the flash point on them, so you're changing the chemical state of it, so it's going from a liquid to a vapor, and once you go to a vapor, it's going to be more apt to ignite.

Fred Radunzel:

So do the different categories have different qualifications that are needed in the cabinets, or is that just something that ...

Dave White:

Well you don't wanna put certain ones with other ones.

Fred Radunzel:

'Cause it says one is at or below 95 then it's above 95 is two and above ... at or below 140 and then at or below 199.4.

Dave White:

Well, combustible versus flammable, you know, that's some of the language that gets in there, is you have when you light it how hot is it and how's it gonna resond to that, if that makes any sense.

Fred Radunzel:

Fair enough. Alright, well that's enough ...

Dave White:

You've never gone out to light a grill in July and poured lighter fluid on it?

Fred Radunzel:

I'm a gas guy, gas grill, so there's no lighter fluid, but I have had where you turn on the gas and the thing doesn't light up. What's going on here? Then all of a sudden, it catches and it poofs at you ...

Dave White:

But that's already a vapor.

Fred Radunzel:

Blows your hair out of the way, but yeah, not to extend ...

Dave White:

Fred doesn't wanna lose his hair, he loves his hair.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah, it's all I've got. When you have a mediocre face and mediocre abilities and a good head of hair, you need that ...

Dave White:

Shawn Hannity hair on him, you know, you've gotta go after that.

Fred Radunzel:

For other people to be compared to my hair, is ... Go ahead.

Dave White:

Yeah Shawn Hannity hair.

Fred Radunzel:

Better Shawn Hannity hair than ... You're starting to get into George Costanza territory. You're creeping.

Dave White:

Mine's in retreat, it's been in retreat for years.

Fred Radunzel:

It's heading to the back end then.

Dave White:

So it doesn't even know what the hell it's doing. It's a little bit better than what's that uh ... Nevermind.

Fred Radunzel:

Nothing?

Dave White:

No, I mean, I'm trying to think, Goonies, what's the big ...

Fred Radunzel:

Sloth?

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

"Hey you guys!"

Dave White:

"I'm not trying to sloth here, but ..." You know, it's one stage better than that s***, come on.

Fred Radunzel:

Well, I had a couple things written down here, got some stories about soaking up some liquids. We had a Great Dane ...

Dave White:

You had a Great Dane?

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah, you knew I had a Great Dane, that's a dog I had. So she's a small Great Dane, but she's only about 125 pounds. Pretty good size Great Dane.

Dave White:

They don't live very long.

Fred Radunzel:

She made it about nine and a half years, which is a pretty good run for a Great Dane. But, when we got her, we got her from like a Craigslist type of situation where it was like 150 bucks, take the dog, and then it's like hey I tried to write them a check and they were like, "No we don't ... no checks. We don't have a checking account. You take cash." And we could just tell this dog was in a bad situation, so we went in to get her ...

Dave White:

Come with a dog toy or anything like that, did they ...

Fred Radunzel:

Collar, she had a collar. And she only liked the cheap food. She doesn't like any of the better food, she only like the cheap stuff.

Dave White:

So like Walmart's Ol' Roy or ...

Fred Radunzel:

Literally that was it, Ol' Roy, and when we took her to the vet, the vet was like, "Yeah, we pretty much call that garbage in a bag.

Dave White:

You need get some science diet or whatever.

Fred Radunzel:

There's no nutrients in that stuff, it's like you're eating fast food every day for a human. And so we got her, day one there's a lot that goes ... Anyways, so there's a lot that goes into having a dog that you take from one environment, you put them into a new, it's pretty stressful.

Dave White:

Yeah but that's what I'm saying is maybe it was kinda that whole rock star that you take it out of the rock star life and it's just ...

Fred Radunzel:

Yep and so we got her home that day one, night one went okay, but the next day the bubble guts started going. If you've ever had a Great Dane in action, a Great Dane with diarrhea and vomiting is not something you wanna deal with in your house.

Dave White:

'Cause they probably ... quite a bit, right?

Fred Radunzel:

Eat quite a bit? Yeah.

Dave White:

Yeah it's gotta be pounds of food.

Fred Radunzel:

Not as much as you'd think.

Dave White:

You see a little dog will eat a can of dog food so I'd guess ...

Fred Radunzel:

A Great Dane eats a big bowl, like a big cereal bowl of dog food there, twice a day.

Dave White:

So nothing like having a big old bowl of chili smeared all over the house in a day.

Fred Radunzel:

It's pretty much what you've got going on, so it became a disaster of her not being as potty trained as they said that she was, so we have to deal with just a lot of concrete floor and trying to soak up messes and just real disaster situations and then we came to find out that she was spayed but she wasn't spayed. So we were told she was spayed and so, having never had a female dog in my life, I had never been through that, so then we got to figure out how are we gonna absorb what's going on here, so we bought a kit, we bought adult diapers we poked a hole through so the tail could go through the back of the diaper and then watch the dog have their mess in this diaper and changing diapers every once in a while.

Dave White:

That's a lot going on.

Fred Radunzel:

There's a lot going on [inaudible 00:37:05] so luckily we loved that dog, but ... yeah so we had that. I had another one where I was thinking of soaking up sweat and so in basketball, there's a kid on my team, his name was Drew, and he decided that he was a big sweaty guy, and so his basketball practice jersey, he decided that he wasn't gonna wash it, just ever. He just didn't wash it and then day after day, he'd hang it up in his locker by the shoulders, so it'd just hang up in his locker and it would dry and then the next day he'd take it off and then he'd put it on. And then he'd go back and he'd hang the wet jersey up in his locker.

Dave White:

It probably worked for a little while.

Fred Radunzel:

And eventually it got to the point where he took it off of the string, put his hand under the jersey, and it stood straight up, like crispy, a crispy basketball jersey. It had the most potent smell you've ever smelled.

Dave White:

That's pre-Febreeze.

Fred Radunzel:

Oh yeah, this is pre-Febreeze. And we were red on one side and white on the other side and it the white side had a shade of brown, it was just tinted with stinky sweat, so he made that thing just stick up in his jersey, but it was like a snake charmer where he's doing the thing and the snake's all weaving through but he just has a basketball jersey that's going up on there, so ... I don't even got any good sweat stories or any big sorbent ... Self-absorbing stories.

Dave White:

Not really. ... Yeah, none that anybody would wanna hear.

Fred Radunzel:

Yep. That Great Dane, we went through piles and piles of paper towels and whatever you could find to soak up her messes, just rolls and rolls ...

Dave White:

So what have you got for the dumb a** of the week this week?

Fred Radunzel:

Well that's what I was thinking we just ... We mold that dumb a** of the week into your grill story and that guy just kinda becomes our dumb a** of the week for this week.

Dave White:

Not understanding or paying attention to ... And I'll go ahead and say Dave's the dumb ass of the week and we've all every now and then had a little too much to drink and not paying attention to what's going on, because a lot of times if we're dealing with stuff that we're gonna light or you know a propellant or something like that, we need to kind of pay attention to what the flash point of said stuff is, because everything's not created equal.

Fred Radunzel:

Dave and many others like him working a grill this weekend ...

Dave White:

We're getting ready to go into Memorial Day and trust me ...

Fred Radunzel:

There's gonna be some dumb a**** lighting themselves on fire.

Dave White:

There will be ... How to say it ... There'll be less burn victims ...

Fred Radunzel:

Fourth of July?

Dave White:

Than Fourth of July, but there will still be ...

Fred Radunzel:

There'll still be collateral damage.

Dave White:

There will still be some dumb a** that ends up in the ER, whether it's lighter fluid, it doesn't matter what grill situation. Some dumb ass is gonna end up there.

Fred Radunzel:

Yep. I think that's it for today from Omaha. We're working in here on season three of this podcast and hopefully we're starting to kinda figure it out and we really do appreciate the feedback we've gotten from people that have reached out to us to say, "Hey, we appreciate what you're doing and you guys are doing a good job, so the more of that, the more it makes us wanna do it and we definitely love that feedback, so ...

Dave White:

If you see something, say something. It's a brotherhood out there, guys, and we keep talking about that, and it's okay, you know, we talk about the dumb ass of the week, but I think a lof of people may look at that as being negative, and while it appears negative, it's like if you can't accept your own faults and celebrate them, you're never gonna get any better. So, it doesn't matter what you're doing is talking about the fact that you almost screwed something up may help you from actually screwing it up and actually being, how to say, not sweeeping it under the rug or to go back to our little piss story is if you go back to Billy Madison, or no ...

Fred Radunzel:

Big Daddy.

Dave White:

Big Daddy, I'm sorry, I'm getting all of it ... So if somebody pees in the floor and you just throw newspapers over it, things aren't going to get better, so just trying to cover stuff up with newspaper, let's be bigger and better and batter than that.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah, so once again, reach out to us, all of our social media spots you can find us, we're pretty much everywhere. You can reach out to us quatcitysafety.com.

Dave White:

We're everywhere! We're everywhere!

Fred Radunzel:

We got a lot of resources on our website so if you guys wanna check them out, we really appreciate that, once again give us the feedback, and we will see you next time! Safety has no quitting time! For Dave, I'm Fred, later.

Outro Speaker:

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 fredquadcitysafety.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.