Intro Speaker:

Dave & 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:

All right, guys. Welcome to another episode in season three here of Dave and Bacon's Safety Tales. We're still ... we're back, and we're talking safety here at another episode. This one's coming to you ... from lovely Davenport, Iowa, the homeland.

Dave White:

The metropolis of Davenport.

Fred Radunzel:

The metropolis, the quad city area.

Dave White:

This is not actually metropolis because that's a town in Illinois.

Fred Radunzel:

Isn't that where Superman's from? Metropolis?

Dave White:

But if you ever go, it's-

Fred Radunzel:

My aunt lives there. They have a Superman's statue and all that shit.

Dave White:

Yeah, right in front of city hall, there's a 15-foot-tall Superman or whatever.

Fred Radunzel:

Air conditioner must have just started. Anyway, Fred Radunzel here with Quad City Safety along with Dave White. We are there at all your social media ... social media. You can reach out to us. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. We're active in all three, trying to deliver some content from those spaces. If you guys have any questions, please feel free to hit us up.

Dave White:

Just trying to send you guys home safe at night.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. If you prefer email, I'm Fred@quadcitysafety.com. He's Dave@quadcitysafety.com. Feel free to reach out to us with really anything you got, PP, safety related, if you just want to say hey, what's up, I'm enjoying the podcast, we would love to hear from you. Like I said, we're going to keep doing it as long as somebody's listening to it. Really appreciate you guys listening. Once again, we're going to talk a little bit I think about respiratory today. But before we get into that, I read a little article. It was from ISHN Magazine. What does ISHN even stand for? Any idea?

Dave White:

Uh-

Fred Radunzel:

I feel like I've seen that one [crosstalk 00:02:16].

Dave White:

Health News, I think?

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. Anyway, they wrote an article here about how safety can learn from marketing. I thought there was a couple interesting principles in here kind of to think about, but I'm just going to read the first paragraph and then we'll just chat a little bit about some of the other bullet points. But the senior VP of marketing at a Fortune 500 company told me he wanted his customers to feel like buying his product was the most logical decision they had ever made. He wanted his marketing research to ensure that his product would exactly fulfill its purpose and both meet and exceed the customer's specific needs. He went on to describe how he wanted his follow up service to his product to reinforce the buying decision at every level. He wanted his brand to become the symbol of satisfaction and create customer loyalty. Kind of what he's trying to ... how he kind of makes the correlation is consider for a moment that the difference between this approach and what the average corporate safety program has, most companies view their workers as safety's problem rather than safety's customer.

And so, I think it's kind of a cool concept to look at it. Instead of saying, "Man, Dave is messing up my bonus that I get because he keeps cutting his hand off, rather needs two stitches in his hand, and that's messing up my day." But if you really look at it as in Dave is your customer as a safety person.

Dave White:

Well, there's a push to go more towards behavioral based systems. And to really control ... I mean, if you don't control people's behavior, you're not going to control any safety factors. If you created versus unfortunately whether it's construction or industry, the safety director's always kind of ... kind of usually a villain. He's a villain or he's an enforcer or he's somebody that doesn't ... how to say, he's looked at different than what he should be which is an advocate or frame it a little bit different.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

And again, where the article gets cool is looking at safety as a product and then figuring out when you market a product, you're trying to figure out again like he said whether it's features and benefits. But what does the end user's experience need to be? If all we got to do is turn the air on to get everybody acting a little bit more safe and we approach it from the ... y'all quit getting heat stress. But we don't turn the air on, then we're not really paying attention to really the experience there.

Fred Radunzel:

Or this guy's piece of clothing that we're making him where every single day is completely uncomfortable and for a $1 more, we could have him in something that's comfortable, which is going to make him more efficient.

Dave White:

And then all of a sudden efficiency goes off and then widgets fly out of the line and-

Fred Radunzel:

And then he talks to his buddy about how great it is that we got these new shirts and how much our company cares about us and maybe his buddy that works for a different company that's in the shitty shirt. He tells his buddy, "Hey, you should really come work for us. They got us these great shirts.  They really care about us." And so it's like marketing your safety program to your employees and then I think it's getting buy in from the top. It's an easier way to ... if you talk to the decision makers or the leadership level at whatever company that you're at and kind of explain to them that this is the program that you kind of want to run and you want to run it like this, I think it all will make sense in kind of the long run sort of.

Dave White:

It will. I mean, because-

Fred Radunzel:

They'll see the production's going to increase because you're doing it this way so maybe spend a little more upfront.

Dave White:

Even if production doesn't increase but you do get that behavioral base and all of a sudden instance goes down, you're going to save on work comp cost. You're going to save on a lot of different things. It's going to be hard to really ... how to say, I think some people always want to be able to if we can't put it in a spreadsheet and prove it out in a week, then it doesn't exist or it's not real. And I've mentioned the study a number of times as we've talked. They've gone back and looked at spend and safety whether it's personal protective equipment or training over time, and there's over ... I think it's like $2.12 return on every dollar that you put into it.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

And they measured that across multiple industries, multiple costs or cost centers. It's something that it doesn't happen overnight.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

Takes a little time. Takes a little time to get right, and you got to believe in the process.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. I think ... in marketing, your customer, if your customer can be your biggest advocate and sell your product for you, it makes your job a lot easier. If your workers that are working under you appreciate what you're doing for them and are an advocate for you safety program, then that word kind of spreads around your place and then all of a sudden you got ten guys that were working safely. It kind of becomes cool to work safely because of we're doing this great job and we're getting rewarded in this way, and our company cares so much about us. I'm going to work that much harder and it just spreads like wildfire. Anyways, just thought that was kind of a cool article. Looks like it was all the way back in 2016, but it just got on Fred's doorstep today, it was written.

Dave White:

He's a little behind in the read.

Fred Radunzel:

If you guys want a copy of that, definitely reach out to us, and I can go ahead and share that with you. But today, I wanted to talk a little bit about-

Dave White:

We can probably post it on our LinkedIn.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah, for sure.

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

I can do that. I can share it right after that. I'll definitely do that. We're going to talk a little bit today about respiratory protection.

Dave White:

Yeah, I got to thinking about this, and it took me back to the days in your head you go back and I'm like when should I have worn a respirator? All of a sudden, immediately two things came up that were easy. One was I grew up around throwing hay and baling hay and being in a hay barn, and I can remember man, at the end of the day you would always get out there and you would literally pick your nose and you would have these boogers that ... I mean, they were rocks. And I'm sitting there going immediately I think back, and I'm like, yeah, we probably wouldn't have been comfortable to have a respirator on there, but I'm not sure what ... luckily, I wasn't the allergic kid I guess, but no telling what I could have inhaled.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

Another one was we used to always spray, working in the back patch, we'd always spray a bunch of chemicals. No telling what ... if you're taking it through a pump spray, you're turning it into an aerosol. It's airborne. We're walking around. It's killing things. So it's probably not the best to breathe. Going back and looking at the stories there, when and what did I do? Well, that was probably two places that one, would have been one kind of respirator, another one would have been another.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah, I had two. I got a bunch of water in my basement seven or eight years ago, and I know that there were two simultaneous hazards that I was working under. One was the drywall got completely wet and then it started getting moldy, so I just ... moldy drywall all over. We're moving that, pulling it off with my hands, splattering on my face and doing that. Should have had the respirator for that. And then there was little 12 inch tiles on the floor, drain tiles.

Dave White:

[crosstalk 00:10:42].

Fred Radunzel:

And so of course, I had the floor scraper thing, just knocking those tiles, popping them right up wearing no respirator. I probably am going to really miss between 2034 and 2038 that I would have lived through. I could have seen that stuff, but instead I'll check out whenever.

Dave White:

Was your Dad in the basement? You know how they had these [inaudible 00:11:04] doing this between this year and this year. You can sue the hell out of somebody. Call this number.

Fred Radunzel:

They should have told you about asbestos tile in the basement. Not to do that when your drywall got wet. Not that they have probably drywall that can get wet.

Dave White:

Yeah, well green board drywall. It couldn't be submerged.

Fred Radunzel:

I bet you that stuff can still get mold on the outside of it though.

Dave White:

Probably.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

Mold can grow anywhere.

Fred Radunzel:

A little mold never hurt you.

Dave White:

As long as it's not black.

Fred Radunzel:

Oh, this shit was black.

Dave White:

Oh. Yeah, don't breathe it.

Fred Radunzel:

Black in color.

Dave White:

It's only black. There's other molds that are hazardous. When I had my lung issues, that was one of the things that ... I was in the hospital almost a year ago, and they would come in one day, and they'd be like well, we got to test you for bat shit. And then it would be we got to test you for weird mold strains because they couldn't figure out-

Fred Radunzel:

What's going on.

Dave White:

What was triggering me or whatever. And so I didn't know that there were so many tests that they could ... they would come in, and they would hand me a lab cup and then give me some albuterol or I'd start hawking up loogies and then they would run down to the-

Fred Radunzel:

Test your loogie?

Dave White:

Yeah, and run down and they must have certain tests that look for this battery of whatever it is.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

Yeah. Sorry about that. I digress.

Fred Radunzel:

Main points of this, as for examples of jobs that require respiratory protection. And I would say that's anyone that's wearing safety equipment, there's a good possibility that what they're doing could require respiratory protection in some sort, whether it's painting or construction or working with any chemical or any manufacturing plant, welding, you're around a lot of dust. It's probably something to take a look at and kind of do a hazard assessment there and figure out whether or not you need-

Dave White:

Probably the biggest problem with it is it becomes that complacency issue of well, I'm only going to do this for like 20 minutes. And unfortunately, that's not the best way to go about it because you don't really always know how much ... unless you've had an industrial hygienist come in there and figure out what you're getting, maybe you'd get a full dose of you only need one microgram per cubic meter for whatever, and you're in a ton of it, and you suck it all up in a couple minutes.

Fred Radunzel:

We talked a little bit about the silica standard. I think now general industry ... isn't general industry, that's passing something with silica is supposed to happen in [crosstalk 00:13:47].

Dave White:

It triggers September-ish.

Fred Radunzel:

Is it September?

Dave White:

Yeah, something like that.

Fred Radunzel:

[crosstalk 00:13:50] sooner.

Dave White:

It's very soon.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

But people don't realize-

Fred Radunzel:

How dangerous-

Dave White:

Well, they don't realize how dangerous number one it is, but number two, they don't understand where all it's at. And you literally ... anybody wants to know, go to your ... now your SDS book and flip through and if you see [inaudible 00:14:11] or you see silica in it, you got a problem because one of the recent ones which blew my mind because I hadn't thought about it was we had a customer that was using a kitty litter to pick up, using as [inaudible 00:14:31]. What's in it?

Fred Radunzel:

Hell if I know. I don't know. Different-

Dave White:

High level of [inaudible 00:14:37].

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

High level of silica. What do you do usually after you put that on there? You sweep it. So all of a sudden you're making ... you're literally making-

Fred Radunzel:

Pushing these [crosstalk 00:14:48].

Dave White:

You're literally making [inaudible 00:14:52] or air bound which is fundamentally not what you want it to ... you do not want that to happen.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

Long story short is even something as simple as that, I guess most people think that the exposure is ... am I cutting concrete? Well, no. There's more to it than that.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. That's the one too that you breathe that thing in, and it's little razor blades just cutting up your insides as you breathe that stuff in, right?

Dave White:

No, that's not true.

Fred Radunzel:

I thought that was the one that was silica that had sharp to cut inside you when you breathe it in. Am I mistaken, misnomer?

Dave White:

That's a misconception.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

Basically, silica is a little tiny particle. When you breathe it in, gets into your lungs, and people a lot of times think it just cuts the lungs up. What it does is the lung gets it, grabs a hold of it and goes this is bad. I need to kill it. Then your own body creates antigens to kill it that all it does is kill your lung. It kills your lungs.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

It's something that's not supposed to be there that your lungs have a chemical reaction and then destroy your lung.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

That's actually-

Fred Radunzel:

What's in [crosstalk 00:16:06].

Dave White:

I didn't know that until probably a year ago. I was under that same conception of it sharpening and hacks it up.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. That's interesting. How about the importance of engineering controls and how you can work to reduce the threat of hazards?

Dave White:

In construction, if you look at the process there, there's a table out there that kind of goes job by job and says if you're doing this and then says ... and most of them the engineering control is typically water.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

If I'm running a concrete saw every day, I'll leave here. I'll head down 80 towards the house, and I will see some jackass standing there just cutting concrete with a big [inaudible 00:17:02]. He's got the best tan in Davenport.

Fred Radunzel:

No sleeves.

Dave White:

Yeah, looks like he's just rocking it.

Fred Radunzel:

He's got the salt and pepper hair from the dust.

Dave White:

Yeah, just literally. Just covered in it. And it's like that's not good. Theoretically, all you kind of got to have is a garden hose. It's not that easy, but just a water source, having a water, doing a wet cut-

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

Would completely eliminate everything that's going on there. But what happens?

Fred Radunzel:

You're not going to take the time to do that.

Dave White:

Don't have the water source. There's something that goes on. Then you have the problem.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

Just going back into you're talking about engineering controls is engineering controls doesn't necessarily extract everything. It can limit the amount of PP that you have to wear.

Fred Radunzel:

Ventilation.

Dave White:

Yeah, ventilation.

Fred Radunzel:

Would be another major one. Can you think of other examples?

Dave White:

I'm trying to think of other examples that I've heard.

Fred Radunzel:

That's what I was thinking.

Dave White:

Well, a lot of it's like some of it, you always get these people to show you these weird case studies.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

Some of the weird case studies were like yeah, they were working on a parking ramp but this part of the parking ramp appeared to be open air, but it was closed off by two sides, you know what I'm saying? Where there was no ventilation. And the exposure in there was astronomically high because it didn't really dissipate like in an open air environment.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

And they didn't test it that way. The tested the open air. They're like everything's good and then down here is where they found out that things were really, really, really bad.

Fred Radunzel:

I think another thing that I read about comes to engineering control, where the work is actually done. So maybe it can be where I'm doing the work and I'm exposing myself to it so I'm wearing the correct PPE, but the area that I'm doing, other people aren't exposed to it so you don't have to have 20 different people wearing PPE because this thing that I'm working on is also going out the doorway into their workspace so they also need to be protected from it.

Dave White:

No doubt about it.

Fred Radunzel:

It's kind of limiting other people's exposure.

Dave White:

And when you told me we were talking about this, it triggered the worst industrial accident that ever happened where deaths occurred was related to silica.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

And it was called Gauley Mountain was the project, and it was in West Virginia. And basically believe it was related to the railroad, and they were just trying to bore a hole through a mountain. The mountain ended up being granite, which has a high silica component in it.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

And so there was five ... I had to look it up because I couldn't remember the numbers or whatever. There was 5000 people on that project. And it was multiple ... I think it was like a four or five year project. So 5000 people on the project, 2500 ... they figured 2500 people were expose, which meant they were underground and working on whatever there.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

Of the 2500 people that were allegedly exposed, 1500 of them ended up with silicosis. 764 died because of the fact that at their workplace, they were exposed.

Fred Radunzel:

Thirty percent of those people that were exposed to it.

Dave White:

I mean, that's crazy.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

I mean, can you imagine? Who would want to work there?

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

I mean, you'd have a fatality now and nobody wants to step in the door, much less guess what? You got two out of three chances you're going to come home tonight.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

That's horrible odds, and that was only ... the thing about that was that was in the 1930's. And you would say nobody really knew about that. Well, they already knew about it because Greeks and Romans had already written about the fact that they realized there was already a problem with silica. It goes back to Greek and Roman times where they had already identified that stone masons and people that worked around that stuff-

Fred Radunzel:

Were getting sick.

Dave White:

Were getting sick and dying of respiratory issues at younger ages than anybody else. If you can figure that out without having an iPhone or an Android phone or a tablet-

Fred Radunzel:

And two million people writing about it on the internet.

Dave White:

Yeah. Figure it out then it becomes the whole thing is we just become complacent and ignorant about stuff that we already figured out.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. And we can do better.

Dave White:

Always do better.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. How about some ... I got some basic info for ensuring job site respiratory programs are safe and compliant. I kind of took this info from ... right on OSHA's website. You can kind of elaborate on maybe a couple of these, but written work site specific procedures. Just having it defined what's happening.

Dave White:

You have to ... every time you have a hazard or whatever you should have a program, and the program is just basically documentation of here's what's going on and here's who's kind of in charge of making sure that we do all these things and all these things are in the list.

Fred Radunzel:

Here's the work that we're doing.

Dave White:

Yeah, and just document it so that it's something ... and it needs to be reviewed because everything changes over time, and that's where we get ignorant and complacent.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. Selection of appropriate respirator. This says approved by [inaudible 00:22:55]. There's charts ... pretty much every one of these respirators that you can buy has a chart for what you're working with. Tell you exactly what [crosstalk 00:23:05].

Dave White:

You'll have fumes. You'll have fibers. You'll have particulates. You'll have vapors. You may be in a situation where it's [inaudible 00:23:12] meaning there's such a composition of stuff that [inaudible 00:23:16] going to expire. You can asphyxiate for lack of oxygen. Respirator's not really going to help you there.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

But well filtering face piece or anything, if you had a SCBA or something like that on there.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. So then I got training and fit testing and inspection, cleaning, maintenance and storage which probably should be part of your training.

Dave White:

The only thing about your list not to go after you is medical evaluation should be first.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay. I don't know necessarily this is in order.

Dave White:

I'm just saying.

Fred Radunzel:

But medical evaluations next.

Dave White:

You know why that is?

Fred Radunzel:

Why?

Dave White:

Why you want to have a medical evaluation first?

Fred Radunzel:

Because you could potentially be harmed by the fit testing?

Dave White:

Exactly. You can have [inaudible 00:24:00] that's like one cheeseburger away from death. You throw him on there, and it's just enough stress that it throws him maybe into a cardiac event.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

One of the ones that somebody pointed out to me is there's actually some psychological questions. So you could literally put somebody in a face piece that's claustrophobic and have them flip shit on you.

Fred Radunzel:

Right [crosstalk 00:24:26].

Dave White:

Yeah. There's ... always have that ... we have people that always ... we do fit testing here at Quad City Safety. We do quantitative and qualitative. But one of the things that we don't do is we're not doctors. You can tell by this podcast that there's nobody here that's got that-

Fred Radunzel:

There's no Ph.D. No.

Dave White:

No post [inaudible 00:24:45] diggers here. With that said, you need to show up with your own medical evaluation, but there's a reason that that's first and then the other triggering events.

Fred Radunzel:

And then we got work area surveillance and air quality standards.

Dave White:

Absolutely. I mean-

Fred Radunzel:

Most of the time that's going to be you have somebody come in, run those tests.

Dave White:

You have another [inaudible 00:25:11]. Industrial hygienist, CIH come in, and basically they kind of got to know what you're doing and they kind of need to have some conversations. Otherwise, it's not like they come in and they have this meter that they just hold up a microphone and they can go oh, well you have this, this, this and this. You kind of have to go we're putting all this stuff in here so it could be this, this, this or this. And then the industrial hygienist comes in and measures and goes yep, you got that. You don't need to worry about that. You got that. And kind of pitch through it.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. All right. That gives us some pretty good ... that's a pretty good conversation on that. I'm going to move on to this week's dumb ass of the week. This guy I met personally and just one of the fit testing classes that I did where you ran through 150 people in a couple days coming through and doing fit testing, and there's at least one of these guys in every large group that you do. He's got a long beard. He's got a big bushy beard, and he doesn't have to shave. He doesn't have to because they haven't told him or maybe they mentioned to him hey you need to be clean shaven for this, and he shows up with a full beard anyway, and he needs to get fit tested to do his work. Usually there's no one from the company around when they do this. This guy comes up and confronts you, and you tell him can't fit test you with that beard.

And so he argues with you. Of course, they're always ... I was fit tested in the past with this beard on and I had no problem. And I think a lot of times what happens is they put the respirator on over their big beard. They have the mask up against their face. Someone sprayed the solution on them. The solution just goes right into their beard, soaks up into it. And they don't actually ever taste the solution so therefore they're not in danger.

Dave White:

They taste it.

Fred Radunzel:

They always will taste it? I think some of that can get caught up in their filter, in their filtering beard.

Dave White:

I guess theoretically but-

Fred Radunzel:

That's the only way I've been able to justify that they can't taste it or they're just a liar. It's almost impossible.

Dave White:

Well, there's two things going on there. One is yes, people will lie to keep their Duck Dynasty beard. But-

Fred Radunzel:

Sharp dressed man.

Dave White:

But number two is some of the solutions like [inaudible 00:27:50] is a saline based solution, and there's I want to say it's around one percent so one out of every hundred persons can't taste salt.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

If you can't taste salt, you can't taste ... because again, it is not a quantitative, qualitative. So it's a subjective test going hey, this is what it tastes like. Tell me if you taste this.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

And if they can't taste it because you'll get people you haven't even screw up the bulb and they're like yeah, I taste it. It's like you can't because it doesn't ... it's not here yet.

Fred Radunzel:

Sometimes I think if you're doing it in a small enough room, maybe they're standing over there while their buddy's getting it done.

Dave White:

I will tell you-

Fred Radunzel:

I can usually taste it when [crosstalk 00:28:34].

Dave White:

Make sure and always wash your hands and wear gloves.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

Before you go eat lunch.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

Because I've made that mistake of-

Fred Radunzel:

I got to wash my lips.

Dave White:

Picking up food or something and going to take a bite of it and almost losing my cookies.

Fred Radunzel:

What I ended up doing enough fit test, like one of those days where I do 60, 70 people in one day, I'll end up getting something to drink from a water fountain like in between sessions and I just taste it on my lips. It's hard to get it off your lips once it's on there.

Dave White:

You have to ... it's shower time.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. That guys definitely the dumb ass of the week because the reason that you're getting fit tested is to make sure that this respirator that you're wearing will protect you from whatever you're trying to protect yourself against. If you're not giving ... if you're lying or you're ... the chemical that you're working with is probably not going to get caught up in your beard. That's why you don't even fit test somebody that has that type of facial hair that will mess up that seal. Anyways, we're going to move back on ... we're moving on here to the safety Q&A this week. Just a couple questions that I received, and I'm going to have Dave answer them. Number one, are we able to tie off with a retractable to a pipe?

Dave White:

I'm going to emphatically say no.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

And the reason I say no is not that you might not be able to, but there's so many things wrong that if somebody's asking you that question, they haven't worked through all the little things that we have to think about. We're going to go no and then we're going to work to yes. No.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

Okay, but if number one, is what kind of ... when you're talking about the retractable, that personal [inaudible 00:30:24] designed for that? Does it have a tie back capability? Because really you can't wrap around it and tie back into the webbing unless it's designed for that. First of all, we got to make sure is that the right thing? Then there's a whole plethora of stuff to work on after that is number one, there's not many pipes that ... because now the pipe becomes the anchor point. It's not a certified anchor point so it's got to be able to withstand 5000 pounds.

Fred Radunzel:

The pipe's connected to something else. What is that doing?

Dave White:

Yeah, exactly. How long is this span of pipe and how is it ... most pipes just have some generic pipe hangers that ... can you imagine the guy sitting there and it’s got those-

Fred Radunzel:

The orange [crosstalk 00:31:15] on the end of it?

Dave White:

Well, no. It's got the BS like you've seen those pipe hangers that are just little plastic J clips, and so just kind of-

Fred Radunzel:

It's like it's just holding up an overhead light like that?

Dave White:

Yeah. And so realistically, no. And what's going through the pipe? Is it ... most pipes in places have stuff going through them. Most likely if you're this guy doing it, it's going to be is it conduit? Bad idea. Electricity. Is it maybe steam? Maybe it's chemicals. Maybe it's a compressed gas. Just no. Let's just go with no.

Fred Radunzel:

These are-

Dave White:

I'm not going to say you can't, but I'm going to say no.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah, unless somebody has raided that thing for fall protection somehow.

Dave White:

I'll guarantee you they haven't.

Fred Radunzel:

Right. That right there is for somebody like an us can come in and help you out. The answer's probably no on that, but here's where we can tie off.

Dave White:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is ... we always forget that it's 2018. I mean-

Fred Radunzel:

People out there to help.

Dave White:

Well, there's a million different anchor points to where it used to be kind of like what do you do here? There's nothing to do, which I got that also.

Fred Radunzel:

But I can also understand you're working there. There's not a lot of stuff to tie off to. You got your rebar hook on the end of your retractable. You can just throw it on that pipe and you're good to go.

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

Got to look at it a little bit more than that. Number two. Are cut resistant gloves just cut resistant on the palm?

Dave White:

Depends what glove it is.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

You got to really pay attention to the glove because most of the time when you look at it and it has A, and it'll have a number and the number goes from one to nine so it'll say A1 to A9, and that basically is the cut rating of the glove. Well, to get that, they get on the glove and they take a piece of it that the test. Most of the time that is from palm. Well, when we start talking about cut resistance, cut resistance is not always the same on a glove 360 degrees. If we take a glove that's I would say 85 percent of what we sell is palm coated cut resistance gloves. So it's got a polymer on the palm and a shell. So there's cut resistant shell with a polymer on the palm.

Fred Radunzel:

Yes.

Dave White:

That will test higher than just the polymer on the shell will test higher than just the shell itself because there's more stuff to cut through.

Fred Radunzel:

But is it normally the entire glove what they would have to rate it for in most cases?

Dave White:

Most of the time the test is done on the palm.

Fred Radunzel:

[inaudible 00:34:22] an A4 glove. You're saying that you would not get A4 protection on the back of the hand?

Dave White:

It would vary.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

And there's a lot of gloves that are not 360 degrees. If you look at their literature, there's a lot of mechanic styles. There's ... most of the time if you're wearing a tight fitting shell, the tight fitting shell is the cut resistant thing.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

But if you've got your hand in a leather driver or some type of mechanics, a lot of times they don't want to get them big and bulky so they know that most of the lacerations are going to happen in the palm of the hand and so they just put whether it's Kevlar or whether there's a million different things that they'll put just in the palm.

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

Then it becomes ... I'm almost leery of them because it gives you a false sense of security because-

Fred Radunzel:

Where's the cutoff point?

Dave White:

Until the dumb ass of the week again, if I think I got cut resistant gloves on and I maybe go to pick something up, I'm not going to think as much of well maybe it's going to ... maybe it hits me right in the back part of my thumb crutch, back up here in the meat.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. You're carrying a piece of glass and a piece of glass shatters, and it's all over your hand.

Dave White:

Going all over the place. You sit there and you go well, that'd been nice to know that it was going to cut. My palms are fine.

Fred Radunzel:

Looking rosy. All right. Good enough. The third one I got is back in the respiratory. Must I be medically evaluated? We touched on this a little bit, but must I be medically evaluated and cleared by a doctor to wear a respirator?

Dave White:

Absolutely.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

Again, I think earlier we kind of hit on some of this stuff they were looking for is number one, they need to go through the whole questionnaire. Maybe you hit ... you may hit some like are you an asthmatic or do you smoke a lot?

Fred Radunzel:

Right.

Dave White:

Well then, they need to take a spirometer and actually can you maintain enough volume to breathe through a respirator? Because you are like your furnace pulling air through a filter and over time the filter gets full so it becomes more [inaudible 00:36:40]. They need to make sure that your body's able to do it. They need to make sure it's not going to freak you out mentally. So there's things in that medical evaluation to happen. The medical evaluation once you have it can be good for a period of time. That's a misnomer. If you have a medical evaluation and you have to be fit tested annually, but you don't necessarily have to have a medical evaluation.

Fred Radunzel:

Annually.

Dave White:

You can have a medical evaluation that lasts multiple years, but if there's anything that changes in your health, you need to take a look at it.

Fred Radunzel:

That's something that we didn't touch on earlier when we were talking about fit testing is it doesn't necessarily even have to be your health that changes. It can be your body shape. You could have surgery.

Dave White:

Did you gain weight? Did you lose weight?

Fred Radunzel:

Bridge your jaw.

Dave White:

There's all kinds of things.

Fred Radunzel:

Did something on your face change that's going to affect the seal of the respirator?

Dave White:

Correct. My double chin turns into a triple chin. Trying to make sure-

Fred Radunzel:

Let's have it go the other way. The double goes to a single.

Dave White:

Maybe so. Maybe I go down in size.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. Double cheese goes down to the single cheese.

Dave White:

That's been the rule of thumb in my life.

Fred Radunzel:

Usually what goes up does not come down?

Dave White:

No. I just add more X's.

Fred Radunzel:

Well, that's enough of the serious business for today. All this talk about respirators got me thinking of masks and so I brought up some of my favorite. Really, I just stole a list from some random site on the internet, but horror movie villains. A lot of times they're wearing a mask. Are you a big horror movie fan?

Dave White:

I can't say that I'm the perfect one, but I don't mind them.

Fred Radunzel:

Right. I get ... sometimes I'll get bored. It better be pretty compelling a story.

Dave White:

I'm trying to think how old I was. At some point in time when I was little little, they sat me in front of the TV and I watched Salem's Lot.

Fred Radunzel:

I know what that is.

Dave White:

It completely-

Fred Radunzel:

Got ya?

Dave White:

I didn't sleep for like a week.

Fred Radunzel:

Children of the Corn?

Dave White:

Anytime somebody would go hey, you want to watch a horror movie? My head went I'm good. That's a bad idea.

Fred Radunzel:

I did Children of the Corn at too young of an age.

Dave White:

You get what I'm saying?

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah.

Dave White:

You completely flip your stuff. It took me probably until my ... I was probably 17 before I'm like okay, let's give this another run.

Fred Radunzel:

Right and then you're in? Especially if a girl that you're kind of trying to be with likes those horror movies, it's not a bad genre to be in.

Dave White:

Yeah. Well yeah. More fun for us than The Notebook or something like that.

Fred Radunzel:

I'll shed a tear at The Notebook. It's just my style. All right. I'm showing Dave some pictures. It's bad podcasting here because you can't see the picture I'm showing him here. So we got old Chucky.

Dave White:

Didn't Chucky even have a girlfriend when-

Fred Radunzel:

Eventually, they made The Bride of Chucky.

Dave White:

Okay, Bride of Chucky.

Fred Radunzel:

Chucky was number one on the list.

Dave White:

Yeah. Chucky really freaked out my daughter. She was deathly-

Fred Radunzel:

Your daughter's like 13 now. So how old was she when she saw Chucky?

Dave White:

No. It was probably on Netflix or something.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay, recent.

Dave White:

But it was literally like something that she walks into the room and I forget what his ... what he would say, but those little beady evil eyes would come on there, and she ... that was not good.

Fred Radunzel:

I got Jigsaw.

Dave White:

I never really got-

Fred Radunzel:

Saw Saw?

Dave White:

Saw.

Fred Radunzel:

Pretty freaky.

Dave White:

Well yeah. I mean, some of that's are you just into how can we cut up a body kind of stuff?

Fred Radunzel:

Right. That'll get ya. This guy, he's a little more lighthearted, but it's The Scream.

Dave White:

That was probably ... my kids are fascinated by not The Scream movies but the-

Fred Radunzel:

Scary movies?

Dave White:

Scary movies. It's always fun to see that they took probably one of the most notable characters. That was pretty scary in the-

Fred Radunzel:

90's?

Dave White:

Was it probably '91 or 2-ish?

Fred Radunzel:

I feel like later than that.

Dave White:

Was it later?

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. I'm thinking '96-ish probably.

Dave White:

Okay. Very memorable.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah, got ya. This guy.

Dave White:

Pinhead.

Fred Radunzel:

Pinhead. He's pretty freaky.

Dave White:

Yeah, that was another kind of ... you got a lot to wrap your cranium around. Well, just the plots of these movies. Some of them are let's cut people up. Some are ... what was I watching?

Fred Radunzel:

Saw your own arm off.

Dave White:

Annabelle or whatever. Have you seen that one about the doll in the rocking chair? I got about 30 minutes into it, and that's enough of that.

Fred Radunzel:

I'm moving on.

Dave White:

I don't even need to mentally think that that can happen.

Fred Radunzel:

Norman Bates from Psycho. That's why there's no mask there. Still maybe the scariest one of all.

Dave White:

Yeah, him and his Mom.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. Moving on.

Dave White:

Yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

Hannibal, yeah.

Dave White:

Clarise. That's ... again.

Fred Radunzel:

Yeah. Where do you come up with that?

Dave White:

Yeah. Just the whole plot line. She puts the lotion on her skin or she gets [crosstalk 00:42:16].

Fred Radunzel:

Hannibal Lecter. That's a freaky one.  I got Leather Face.

Dave White:

Yeah. That was probably-

Fred Radunzel:

Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Dave White:

That's more my speed.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

The Hills Have Eyes where it's literally like there was this family and then they dumped a bunch of chemicals on them and now they're all messed up.

Fred Radunzel:

Famous mask, Jason.

Dave White:

Oh, I can barely tell it's Jason.

Fred Radunzel:

He's swinging an ax there. Friday the 13th. Jason Voorhees, a good one. And then my old nemesis, Freddie Kruger. I only got called Freddie Kruger my entire life.

Dave White:

What's his name didn't make it?

Fred Radunzel:

Who? That's number two. Number one Michael Myers.

Dave White:

Oh yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

What are you looking for? Is that who you're looking for?

Dave White:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

Okay.

Dave White:

I rewatched that this Halloween.

Fred Radunzel:

Did ya?

Dave White:

Forgot how good that really ... I mean it's not well produced.

Fred Radunzel:

It's funny when he shows up on screen. It's like all of a sudden you see his face.

Dave White:

Well, yeah.

Fred Radunzel:

That's my wife's favorite is Halloween.

Dave White:

Yeah. I like it just how to say every time you turn around he's just standing there, and I'm like-

Fred Radunzel:

It's almost comical.

Dave White:

Okay, we can tell it's 1970 because if it's 2018 and that bastard's in my neighborhood standing there like that, cops are ... they're beating him within an inch of his life.

Fred Radunzel:

Somebody's like did you see Michael Myers was by my garage earlier? Can somebody come and handle this?

Dave White:

Or your Ring goes off or whatever to your phone, and you're like [crosstalk 00:43:45]. Michael Myers.

Fred Radunzel:

What the hell is this guy doing with his knife? Acting like he's going to do something. All right. That's all we got for today. We highly suggest telling the new guy that's working on your job site hopefully about our podcast and how to find it. We got a lot more for him.

Dave White:

If you're not going to tell him about the podcast, at least keep your eye out because you maybe teach him a thing or two.

Fred Radunzel:

If you look over your corner ... over the corner of your arm or something-

Dave White:

Over your shoulder.

Fred Radunzel:

Corner? You look over your shoulder, and you see Michael Myers.

Dave White:

The corner of your-

Fred Radunzel:

Your elbow. Corner of your elbow. And you see old Michael Myers standing behind you creeping out, you need to look out for that guy. Hopefully you can be back for next week's episode. We're trying to help a few more people make it home safe. Get yourself a beer if you're doing that. Thank you guys for listening. Reach out to us on any of our social media platforms. Visit us at Quadcitysafety.com. There's a pretty cool blog on there. We have a nice resources page where you can find out about a lot of topics. Tell us what you think in the comments. Ask questions. Like I said, jump into our social media conversation. Get involved. Don't worry. We'll be back next week. Safety's got no quitting time, until then.

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 at Quad City Safety, #SafetyTales or email them to Fred@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.