Mike Strawbridge

See the original article here: Work place Safety Tips

2. Use guards and engineering solutions wherever possible instead of relying on PPE – personal protective equipment. PPE is hard to police and uncomfortable to wear. Find a way to prevent the exposure in the first place. Your workers will be much more productive if they are comfortable.

PPe should be used as a last resort for keeping workers safe on a regular basis. Far too often I see PPE used as the primary mechanism for avoiding hazards.

Most machines and operations can be designed with enough guards and safer material flow paths to eliminate hazards for workers without resorting to PPE. Personally I hate working in safety glasses and gloves all day. I would much prefer to work in an environment where I feel safe to be there with out a lot of PPE involved.

At one converting plant I worked with, we designed and installed Plexiglas shields over the folder gluers to eliminate the need for safety glasses when working around the machine. The guards eliminated the hazard of flying cartons while still allowing the operators to see the adjust the process.

Productivity went up and waste went down as operators felt safer interacting with the machine.

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Tags: PPE, safety glasses, workplace safety

This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2010 at 11:11 AM and is filed under Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.