Safety Wars
Safety Wars Live 9-28-2022
September 29, 2022
Today on Safety Wars we continue our ongoing Disaster Preparation Month 2022 Programing. Today we are talking about foot protection as well as news. For all of your consulting and training needs give us a call at 845-269-5772 or drop us an email at Jim@safetywars.com. WE NOW HAVE A LIVE SHOW EVERY NIGHT AT 8 TO 9 PM EST ON SAFETYFM.COM www.safetywars.com www.jcptechnical.com #JayAllen #SafetyFM #RatedRSafetyshow #JimPoesl #JCPTechnical #SafetyWars #Power #handprotection #foot protection#disasterprep #prepare
[00:00:00] :  this. This this show is brought to you by safety FM. Warning. The following broadcast contains adult language, adult content, frank safety discussions and stories that might sound unbelievable, but believe me, every one of those stories is true. We didn't start the safety war, but we are going to fight to win it for our families, for our communities, for our workplaces and for our lives. It is Safety Wars for Wednesday September 28, 2022. As usual, we have stuff going on all over the place here. So what did I miss? How am I doing here? I think I'm picking up this pretty well if I do say so myself. Hey, if I don't praise myself, who's gonna praise me? Right, safety in the news. So this comes out of U. S. News and world reports, that's pretty well. Alright. Now I'm certain we're on the air. Switzerland has reclaimed its number one spot in US and World Report's annual best countries rankings after a one year hiatus while the United States and Sweden moved to into the top five. In the seventh edition of this analysis, released on Tuesday, The central european countries to plant to Canada, which moved down to number three in the 2022 ranking, Switzerland also landed at number one in the open for business sub ranking which assesses countries if I have, this is friendly, they're perceived to be. And in the top five. Any guess on what the number two, uh the country was that was Germany Deutschland by the way, I skipped over a couple of things. Safety awards. This is now our 4th, 3rd. Yes. Third, uh, live broadcast this week. We're doing pretty well here. I think I'm getting starting to get the hang of this. Unlike uh, last weekend, earlier this week. Uh, I want to thank everybody for the support, uh, something I want to talk about real quick here in case you don't know and this is for posterity. In part we are dealing with a very serious situation down in florida right now. We have hurricane iron or Ian, depending on how you want to pronounce it. Uh, impacting a lot of things going on in this country, reportedly, there's three million people that have been evacuated as of right now, 803 PM. And this storm system has reached uh, the Fort Myers area and we're seeing reports from all over the place. People are freaking out and everything else. But let's remember, uh, if you are in the path of the storm and you can still do it prepare if, I mean those people up from Georgia, those people up in the Carolinas, if you are there in the storm right now, follow the instructions of your local emergency. I doubt that anybody is listening to safety doors down there. But uh, something you got to remember, we were talking disaster preparation month and everything disasters can hit at any time, especially of the manmade variety. Uh, so essentially what you guys have to do and gals have to do and everybody else, you have to go out there and prepare well ahead of time, I'm hearing problems all over the place about fuel issues down in florida. They've been without fuel for a couple of days, problems getting fuel. Well, guess what? Now? You're in crunch time, as we used to say in college. Uh, you have to go out there and prepare ahead of time. The other thing is this, I still am seeing supply issues with a lot of grocery stores here in the Northeast. Uh, they're doing the trick of uh, so you have a shelf and you have three or four boxes deep in the shelf and now you're only seeing one box deep, right? Because they're having less uh, certain things. My, one of my favorite things, sriracha right, sriracha hot sauce unavailable because they had apparently some kind of agricultural issues over there down in, uh, uh, out in uh, the, the East and the Far east over there, or as you know, the far west, depending on where you live. So a little bit of of an update here. Western leaders have blamed delivered sabotage after the north steam uh, pipe from Russia suffered unprecedented damage off Sweden, causing 3000 ft wide bubbles in the Baltic sea and causing prices to spike explosions were heard near the nord stream one and two pipes where gas is now leaking into the Baltic from three holes scientists have confirmed while chronic safety concerns have led to a five mile exclusion zone were hot zone for those. Uh, first, what some people would call being imposed around the affected area danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said her government believes that leaks were caused by deliberate actions, adding that the gas supply pipeline will be out of action for around a week. Now, I'm a little bit confused here because yesterday they said that the pipeline wasn't being used. Now, it's going to be out of use. I think we're getting a little bit of problem reaction solution here. Uh, again, if uh, it was lack of maintenance for years and this thing decided to rupture. And it's like I was mentioning last night, all things that could cause a pipeline to rupture. Uh, then, you know, I think this is a thing who's gonna pay for this is gonna be, insurance is going to be something else. I think that that has more to do with everything than any with this stuff than anything is, who's gonna pay for this uh, stuff. I don't know how the insurance, uh, people are gonna address this and everything else. Now, we've also heard the now the on in some areas, the conspiracy theorists that say that the US is sabotaging this. And uh, because we're looking to sever the relationship with oil and natural gas being supplied to europe from Russia. And this is part of hay cutting off the power of the supply. again, we cannot have it always here yesterday, Russia did it today us did it right, I don't know. And this all seems to me like someone has to do with money someplace and legalities. The other thing is this, if they're not, if they weren't maintaining that thing and this thing happened then someone's up the proverbial glue vinyl river without a pattern paddle. So that's something to consider. This is from do research. There is apparently a shortage of prison guards all over the country. Well, do you think, I'm surprised by any of that? Look at what we have with prison guards? Not only, you know, if you're a police officer or sheriff or other law enforcement person, you may and you encounter people out there alright, uh you may or may not meet a bad guy or a bad person, you may not. So you're a prison guard or a corrections officer as they prefer to be called. Now you're definitely meaning good chance. Okay, we have some people they're in in prison are not supposed to be there unjustly prosecuted and everything else, but I'm gonna say the overwhelming majority of people in prison. Prob no, they've been convicted of something, some of them very heinous crimes. So now you're in a very stressful situation because now you're, you know, you know, versus other law enforcement where they got to go out and find the bad people here, you know, you're dealing with bad people. so you're dealing with things on a totally different level here. Alright, So coupled with that, and if you read any of the books by people in prison, the last one that I read was from Bernard Kerik from jailer to jailed and he was for a little bit of uh as a reminder, he was one of the heroes of 9-11, he was the police chief in new york's for New york city, then he was he was also the chief of corrections, I believe that's the title, the head of the corrections department, then he was also a security consultant and when he was going to be appointed to a position in the Bush administration, it was discovered there was some type of financial issues that would normally result in a fine and ended up in jail time with jail time. So, uh he ended up on the other side of the system with the prisoners in the federal prison system, but he spent uh pre trial and sometimes post trial in Rikers Island in New york city. He did not realize from looking at this, from the other point of view how horrible the prison conditions were. And he came out with a whole bunch of litany of things that are wrong with the prison system and I I just wish I know with all due respect that maybe people would have done that prior. No, from the other side. Okay, I understand prison punishment, everything else, but realize that most of those people are going to make it out of prison, they're gonna serve serve their sentence. You need to have and this is what Bernard Carrick had said. You need to have programs for them, you have to have education, you got to try to break the cycle of addiction. You have a lot of things that have to go on, but now you're a prison guard, you get put into this situation. All right. What do you, what else do you have? Another associate of mine? Uh G Gordon liddy, Yes, of Watergate fame. He put it like this, You have crappy indoor air quality. All right in there. It's either too hot or too cold. And you're saying, well, you know, so what their prisoners? Well, guess what? There are things from Ashley, the american Society of heating air conditioning, refrigeration engineers, There are thermal guidelines for this uh standard 62 I believe the other one is the standard 15 that they put out uh specifically on thermal limits. But let's remember, not only is this a jail for prisoners, there's also workplace. So now you're subjecting guards to this type of environment. Now you're gonna say lack of health and safety protections. Yeah, guess what? There are lack of health and safety protections because they're government employees, most of the time they are not covered by anything from the federal OSHA. So now they have to rely on state. OSHA. Well guess what up here in new york pesh did a really? I'm sorry I'm gonna say piss poor job during the Covid situation here. I know people who work in the correction system and I'm there going this and that. Oh yeah jimmy. Ah So what's new york patch saying? Oh they're not saying anything. Okay great. Uh No. And they basically turned their back on these people and it's not unique other uh state agencies that are in charge of health and safety from public employees. Where are they? Where were they during Covid? Right I went through and went through the prisons reportedly here. I've heard in the background that uh like you wouldn't believe it's you know it's a horrible situation. So is it really surprising that now oh well now we're gonna have a shortage of prison guards and corrections officers and everything else that goes into the prison system. So I don't know what to say here other than safety. You wanna retain people take safety in mind making a better workplace for them making a better workplace for the inmates, right? They're gonna be out there. What do you want? You want them to come out worse than what they came in brutalized and everything else. That's not something, you know that's not something that's going to no pain for pain. That's not something that's going to be conducive to anything next story. Just when you thought Covid was over with as stated by our president joe biden in an interview over the weekend. There are signs that the U. K. That specifically England. Right. That's on the other side might be headed for a new wave of Covid. Uh The good news on this wave of Covid and we're going to be doing several stories later this week. I have planned on That stuff. The new strain of COVID is a COVID-19 variant that we've already seen. There has been a reported 30% increase in cases in the past few weeks. After a steady decline. Stay tuned for more information later on I'm sure we're gonna get a lot of updates here. This from the OSHA newsroom. I have a couple of articles here. So uh U. S. Department of Labor Find and this was released today. U. S. Department of Labor finds Chicago area candymaker again exposes workers through amputation from machine hazards at a facility. I'm not gonna mention the name of the facility. Uh OSHA finds five violations. Re proposes $201,000 in fines. This sounds like repeat and serious violations here. A federal workplace safety inspection found a Chicago area Candy manufacturers long history of violations for machine safety requirements and they continue after the company exposed workers to invitation hazards and failed to utilize lock out tag out procedures over the last five years. OSHA has issued citations to Barbara for one repeat violation and four serious safety violations. Would propose penalties of $201,000 plus after responding to an april 4th, 2022 complaints of um safe working conditions. OSHA inspectors found workers exposed to amputation hazards because the company failed to utilize energy control procedures such as lock out, tag out a. K. A lotto before workers clear jams and service equipment. So basically whatever they're doing at this facility here, they're making candy. But I don't know if this had to do with candy making machinery often. What happens is machinery becomes Claude becomes fouled, becomes jammed. So what happens? You have to go through a whole procedure on here or you're gonna go through and you're gonna do shut down the machine. This is uh in the lock out tag out standard. I forget off 1910 1 47. General Industry if I got the number wrong, I'm sure I'll hear about it. And what happened is what happens often is that people say, well, hey, I'm not going to go through this procedure because I had to get my work done because I have a quota in place because my boss will yell at me, There's some type of a written or unwritten incentive program here, so they start putting their hands into things too foul to unfound the machines. And what happens often. Uh machines might have an unintended start up and you start losing fingers and toes and uh everything else. There was one case in here in uh New Jersey without equipment guards. And the guy lost his genitalia a number of years ago. And what happened here? Uh There were apparently uh do there was a complaint of unsafe working conditions here meaning someone got piste off, I'll translate, someone got piste off at their boss or at the company and made a report into OSHA. And what ended up was they went out there and cited them for this lock out tag out stuff is nothing to be messing around with ever lock out tag out stuff. It uh no, as bad. So I normally do not go and show the blood and gore in my safety training stuff. I don't do it. However, I was at a refinery and we had workers who did not take lock out tag out procedures seriously. They didn't take it seriously at all. They were like, what the hell? Why am I doing all this? No one, this doesn't help blah blah blah blah blah. What happened was I ended up going and same. Look and these are all younger workers, the older workers knew, hey, you got to be doing this stuff. Not only are you gonna get fired if you're caught not doing it, but you know, that was one of those uh zero tolerance things that they had in the facility, but it's not, not not smart, you don't want to be doing this because we're not in control of who starts up the equipment or not. So I know we went through jimmy. It's maloney. It's this, it's that. Well, guess what I have. I said, I tell you what we're gonna have at the safety meeting, we're going to have a meeting lock out tag out and it's gonna be gory. And uh, no, I made a promise. I said, I don't know if I can deliver on this. It's gonna be gory, but blah blah blah. So we, I went to a website, I'm not going to give the name of it, but it is a common website that uh, broadcast all different types of blood and gore and everything else. And I downloaded a couple of videos off there and they had a whole section, a lock out tag out accidents, accidental machinery startups, things of that nature. After about four or five of these videos of people getting serious, happily hurt or killed. Guess what? Never had a lock out tag out issue again. They said, well, we did not know that this could happen. I said, what me telling you? And then then the question is, well, me telling you didn't, my question is this when you hear these stories from experienced people like me or anybody else, why do you ignore it? That's really what the corporate culture was. So was it really a lock out tag out compliance issue or a corporate culture issue where the foreman or their supervisor or somebody else on the crew. A leader just said have effort were no ignore him. That often happens. By the way, uh, let's face it, we're safety professionals. Were not usually not in charge of work. We're usually not in charge of, bonuses are usually not in charge of pay. We're usually not in charge of hours or anything else. So who are they gonna listen to? Probably not us. And if you can break through that and that's what part of this safety war is giving you a skill, giving you inspiration, giving you uh support, coaching, anything like that. And you can get us there on your side. If you give us a call at 845 to 695772 or email us at jim J I? M at safety wars dot com. Now our next story. U. S. Department of labor told virtual meeting to solicit public input on OSHA whistleblower program improvements. So OSHA is uh holding a meeting middle of october. You can look it up on their website. Uh it's the 10th in a series of meetings on how the agency can improve the whistleblower program. OSHA is seeking comments on one. How can OSHA deliver better whistleblower customer service. And to what kind of assistance can OSHA provide to help explain the agency's whistleblower laws to employers and employees. Something really uh important. Something that I did not know. I heard it on a podcast last week is OSHA is in charge of the here, let me get it. That's enforcing this is weird. I thought this is what I thought. That's all weird, right? So the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002, this was a law that came about because of Enron and Worldcom and the situations that they had in the late nineties, early two thousand's actually, OSHA is in charge of uh what is the Sarbanes Oxley corporate auditing, accountability, responsibility and transparency act. So basically, and I will have a future episode on this, The Sarbanes Oxley act, as far as the whistleblower provisions on there are managed by OSHA, A company was just issued like a company you've heard of like $21.1 million dollar fine by OSHA or whoever else is involved with this for violation of this act. So I think what what my opinion, they have to go and they have to advertise this a little bit more on whistleblowers. So if they want people to actually use the service and generally speaking, I don't have the thresholds in front of me. But if you report a safety issue and you get retribution for it, you get and you like fired or anything, you can report this to OSHA as within a certain amount of time of that alleged violation and they and it's gonna be like quick, like a week, something like that. Alright, don't quote beyond that, but basically it's got to be held done really quickly, otherwise nothing you can't do anything. And uh no people. How successful are they? Not very successful? But I tell you what it does put the company on notice Uh with this it's not a 100% success rate by any means as far as finding but it puts everybody on notice. Okay us. And next story the U. S. Department of hold on U. S. Department of Labor announced its changes through OSHA's severe violator enforcement program to strengthen enforcement and improve compliance. So what's this program? Let's say that you're a severe violator or even a frequent violator? Uh They are go no you get put on a list and you know and basically if OSHA visits you one time they're gonna be there again. Whether you whether or not you have an accident, if you have an accident that has to be gets reported to OSHA then I can almost guarantee you there's going to be investigation now you may say well jim well you know what what would cause that. I'm gonna tell you I've had a couple of clients that have given me calls. Not while they're not while they're in my program. Right? And the safety words are J. C. P. Technical program for uh no that's stuff to manage it. It's when they have an accident and then all of a sudden they get a letter or they get a phone call or they get a visit from OSHA. How do they find out about it? And this is what I often hear, pardon me, I got to move the chair here, I gotta stand up. This is what happens when you have herniated discs. All right. The now that they're so how could this happen? And I say to him, well, what happened? And they said, well, a guy went to a hospital. I said okay. And what happened? Well, I said, was it a workers comp situation? Yeah, he went under worker's comp. And guess what? And guess what happened? I said, oh, show showed up two weeks later said, yeah. And I said, well, that's about the lag time that we're running here in uh now in the Northeast, it takes about a week or two for them to show up for less severe OSHA. Recordable injuries. And they came here and they just showed up and said, okay, they just showed up And, you know, they came this and uh, and you know, and wouldn't, you know, it, five months and three weeks after they showed up, we get issued citations. And these are not the good kind. That's one scenario. The other scenario is this every time there is a 911 or 911 call in many areas, especially in the major metropolitan areas in blue states, in the United States, you're going to probably going to get a uh, if there's a 911 call, Somebody somewhere in the pipeline is going to go and know that gets their attention and then it gets reported to OSHA, a lot of the so even the areas that you wouldn't expect for in Hudson County, I'm not gonna mention the specific city in Hudson County. Uh, somebody got hurt on one of the jobs that I was on. A guy banged his knee. All right. And this is for one of my clients. That was just one of those error rate things called caught up with him and he injured his knee and he went to the doctor too go out and get, you know, get a get checked out. It was the first aid injury. Thank God it wasn't anything serious. It was managed by ice and heat and over the counter medication. And uh, no, there was no, they sent the guy home for the day next day. He came in. He was ok. Right. We did follow up Amanda should and everything was great. That's another service we offer. Long story short, there was a guy, a police officer on detail. What does that mean? He was out there and directing traffic because a job involved traffic control. He ended up going out and uh, because there was an injury, his orders from his management from the chief. Were you had to report injuries, any injuries that happened on that job? You have to report it. So he reported it talked about two or three weeks later, we got a letter from OSHA, what's this and then we ended up having to manage it. And it was no citations issue. They just wanted to know about it. Um That's another thing, right? So companies are unknowingly they get on this uh severe violator program and they're looking at uh no updating the criteria. Right. Well they updated it. Right. What are they? The new criteria include violations of all hazards and OSHA standards and we'll continue to focus on repeat offender Offenders and all industries. Previously, an employer could be in the program for failing to meet a limited number of standards. The changes will broaden the program scope with the possibility that additional injuries will fail. Lobster will fall within its parameters. Since 2010, the severe violator program has focused on enforcement and inspection resources on employers who either willfully or repeatedly violate federal health and safety laws or demonstrate a refusal to correct previous violations. In addition to being included on a public list of the nation's severe violators, lawyers are subject to follow up inspections. The severe violator enforcement program powers OSHA to sharpen its focus on employers who even after receiving citations for exposing employers to hazardous conditions and serious dangers failed to mitigate these hazards, said Assistant Secretary for OSHA. Uh Doug parker specifically going on right? Specifically the updated criteria include the following program placement for employers with citations for at least two willful or repeated violations or who receive failure to evade notice is based on the presence of high gravity series violations, follow up or referral inspections made one year but not longer than two years after the final orders from the first violations and potential removal from the severe violator enforcement program. Three years after the date of receiving verification that the employer has abated all program related hazards. In the past, removal could occur three years after the final order date. So it's not the final order date. It is now going to be when you after you updated the hazards, employer's ability to reduce time sent out in the program to two years if they consent to an enhanced settlement agreement that includes use of the safety and health management system and seven basic elements of OSHA's with semi basic elements of OSHA's recommended practices for safety and health programs. So what's the moral of the story? Don't get on the list. To begin with. Would be number one, Number two, take care of your employees and number three. If you happen to get on the list or any of this stuff, give us a call or any of the other safety FM colleagues here 8452695772. I'm going to take a break here and in the professional safety community communication and planning are just a few keys to your program success. The question many practitioners have is where do I start dr J Allen the creator of the safety FM platform and host of the Ray, our safety show has built a global foundation to help you along the way. Go to safety FM dot com and listen to some of the industry's best and most involved professionals, including Blaine Hoffman with the safety pro sam Goodman with the hop nerd Sheldon primus with the safety consultant Jim proposal with safety wars, Emily, L Rod with unapologetically bold and many others. As India individuals, we can do great things, but as a team, we become amazing, dial into safety FM dot com today and surround yourself with a powerful force of knowledge and support. Okay, we're back. I think we're getting a little bit smoother in our transitions. So some other news, federal workplace safety regulators have proposed firing a sub finding, I'm sorry, a subcontractor. Nearly $1.2 million Boston. The worker was operating an £11,000 excavator in the government center garage in March when an upper floor gave way and he fell 80 ft to his death. It was his first day on the job. So let's talk about that a little bit. Let's say you're you have new employees. They could be experienced journeymen or journey persons. I guess we're calling them where they could be, have other situations and what you end up having to do is train them? Right. Just because someone's been doing a job for a long time, does that alleviate the employer from actually going and training their employees? Some of my clients have a very in depth onboarding system. I know of one former client of mine that it takes the, I'm on boarding is two days where they cover everything that you're gonna ever need to know for your job. They don't care what your experience level is, they don't care about nothing. So that's something uh where you have to consider, hold on, you are listening to safety wars, tomorrow's safety today. So now we're gonna go into the financial numbers for the day. Gold is trading at 16 71.30. Those are in dollars. Some $32.50 silver at 1920 up. Uh 56 cents platinum. 889.90. It's up $23. And palladium at is trading at 21 88.50. It's up 62 10 for the day. Dow jones Industrial closed at 26 5. I'm sorry, 29 6 83. Up 548 points. The NASDAQ closed up 223 points to 11,051 2230.60 for the S. And P. 500 closed at 37 1904 up 71 75. Bitcoin is trading at $19,714. It's up to 632. You know, I could have gotten in on Bitcoin the first day and I thought it was a scam. But anyway, and in theory um is trading at 1351.96. Some additional news. The euro, the pound sterling and the wand are uh all hitting record lows versus the dollar. And what else do we got here? That's all we have today for the news. Mhm. Now on to our main story. Hold on, one thing I forgot, we're going to give you an update here on a story we covered on the safety words podcast back a couple months ago. It's about the alec baldwin and the rust of shooting and everything in there is alleged, we're not accusing anyone of crimes or anything else. But we were like the only program here that actually covered the inside story here with uh this thing, What's the inside story? The inside story is real simple. Was all in the government of New Mexico and their report there have a state administered occupational safety and health program and I forget the exact name. But they have a state OSHA and they had issued a report uh roughly about five or five months after this accident happened last october which killed Helena Hutchins uh filming the Western rust in New Mexico. And basically what what what was the whole thing, I'll give you the gist. The gist of the whole situation is that the uh was the people put everything in writing. That's the whole just how did they find out about what happened on that set? Everybody was talking. Everybody put everything in writing. So what it was made the job, I'm sure immensely easier for the regulators to go in and just they got all the information. So because there's potential criminal stuff in the United States, you do have Miranda rights. You do have the right to remain silent. They didn't use it. Alright. And what, what was, what was in the final report? The final report essentially said that people in charge said, don't worry about safety. They did not follow any of the industry standards for a movie set where you have guns and everything else, whether the real guns, prop guns, these guns, that guns, none of this stuff. And they tried to last october dump it on the uh, responsibility of the prop department, specifically the armorer. There is an actual armorer, right? Not like Mandalorian. Amanda swallow right? Who I, who is a friend of the program by the way, She uh, and they tried to dump it on uh, the uh, I'm sorry, Emily swallow for another program, they tried to dump it on this harbor was basically a uh, safety professional, but for all intensive safety professional early to mid twenties in that range with people with extremely strong personalities on that crew. I think we all know what I'm talking about and they dumped everything on her and then they, and they, the focus was on, hey, uh, you know, the procedures on site and you can read the report for itself and again, everybody is innocent until proven guilty and I'm sure things are being appealed and everything else to the process. So nothing is final and the report might be wrong. Right? How many of us have been on a job where the report comes out from whoever on high and it's freaking wrong that's happened to me repeatedly. Right. And, but anyway, why do I bring up alec baldwin and hit the news yesterday that the final police report on the shooting near santa fe new Mexico is expected next month. That is october about a year at which time the prosecutors will file criminal charges if necessary. Now what do a lot, what now you're dealing with a whole bunch of Hollywood actors, actresses, people, big insurance policies. What's the one thing that they have? They have good attorneys. I can tell you any of these people have phenomenal attorneys. Now you're dealing with a local prosecutor in santa fe and said outside santa fe. I'm not sure the jurisdiction, they don't have enough money for this. They gotta hire professional witnesses. They have to hire uh, all different types of experts. Uh, you have to get people there, You got to do this, you gotta do that. People don't do this stuff for free having Canada yeah, they can subpoena people, but this is gonna cost money. There's money and you don't and the prosecutor may not have the skills to handle this alone again. You're in a small town or whatever. Guess what you gotta hire people, you gotta work overtime, you gotta get this cost money. So they asked for more money from whoever the jurisdiction is and uh they basically requested for about finance board uh granted the District Attorney's office $317,750 in funding in september but it requested 635,000 prosecutor. So I don't know this. Uh No, I'm gonna say this. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty on this. I don't know what that final police report says, but we do know what the other things said and according to new Mexico OSHA things were a little bit lax so I don't know. We'll see these reports may or may not be true anyway. Um the other thing is this with this, it's if someone tells you you're a safety professional, someone tells you ah safety is not important. And they put put that in writing, that's probably something you want to keep. That is a document you want to keep. Now we're going to talk today right on our ongoing coverage of disaster response or that I'm sorry, disaster preparation last night we talked about hand protection. I'm going to talk to you something you got to say this is a little bit off jim you're nuts. But I'm gonna talk about foot protection occupational foot protection. I'm I did a number of years ago, I got a client of mine, they were making the transition from non safety toe shoes and I might call them steel toe shoes, but I know they're composite, but I'm an old guy here, right? I say that jokingly, right, I'm gonna be 52 but uh it's gonna be steel toe from here until kingdom come for me, and it's cliche, but when your feet are okay, you're okay all over. But this client of mine was going to go, no, make this transition and they got a lot of pushback, I mean, you hear it all? Oh, I'm going to, you know, some of my, and it's always the same story. My grandfather's best friend's illegitimate son 100 years ago, was in the pacific northwest and working on skid row. That's where they used to put the roll the uh lumber down to the river and everything in the mills and this 50 ton tree fell from six stories on to his foot. And if it weren't for that steel toe, he would've lost, he would still have his toes today. It's like, huh, okay, well let's make, let's steel toes or composite toes or know what you want is uh used to be ansi standard Z 41. Now, it's been updated the the american society for testing materials. Standard F 24 12 or 24 13. Right on this, right? Uh they're they're just made for incidental things. So I forget how many drools are rated for. But basically you got a hammer, you got, uh, a wrench small hand tools, maybe something falling on your foot. That's what those are for. They're not meant for huge amounts of weight on with a sharp edge dropping from six stories. Number one. Number two. The the thing is, don't go without steel toe boots. Don't do it, do it at home. Don't do another workplace. Go without steel toe boots for a couple of days. You'll notice how often you hit your feet and drop things on your feet happens all the time. But I said, look, I did a deep dive in lexisnexis and some of the other services and basically every regulatory action and every lawsuit came down to this and settlement, pardon me, are you, where was the worker wearing safety toe shoes? Because you're not supposed to use foot injuries as a indicator of of foot hazards? Not supposed to do. You're supposed to assess this ahead of time. So real simple, if you think that you may have a toe hazard or foot hazard, get the appropriate foot protection. Obviously, use the hierarchy of controls. Obviously, you want to eliminate the hazard right? If possible, you want to substitute one hazard for another. You want to you want to engineer the hazard out, then don't separate the hazard from the person and then you want to administrate the hazard? If you the best you can then PPE as the last that's in the workplace. Now let's talk about out there when you're doing disaster response work or disaster cleanups, like we're gonna have in florida, probably starting friday morning sometime. Alright. You don't know, you're not in control of your work area, you're just not, you're not in control of the work areas. So what do you need? Get the damn composite toe or steel toe? F. M. A S. C. M F. 24 13, right? Why you don't want to become a bigger issue either? You don't want to become part of the problem if you're a cleanup worker, remember I know, and I'm not faulting any of the medical facilities down there. They're damaged too. They're gonna be on overload. You're gonna have sick people, you're gonna have people who don't have medicine, you're gonna have people who are hurt responded they're gonna be on overload for some time and now it's not the time to do something stupid and get hurt. Right with that. That being said there are several different types of safety shoes, right? So you may have your standard steel toe, you may have a metatarsal guard that goes from the top of the foot goes over the top of the foot from tech from impacts, conductive, You're saying, well, why would you have conductive shoes? They're meant to ground people out there. People working with shock sensitive material, explosives flammables, right, you're meant to be grounded. They're not very good if you're gonna put them on and you're gonna try to do electrical work because easy path to ground goes through you. In that case you want some type of insulating boots, right, with that right there, normally marked with an ohm on there and the greek letter OEM, look it up, Right, Electrical hazards shoes, right, puncture resistant tools, slip resistant tools and chemical protective shoes. And you have to make sure that you are going to be matching the hazard with the boot, the chemical hazard with the boot. And you have to get the cut sheet from the manufacturer on that socks. You're gonna say socks, you're gonna talk about socks jimmy. Oh yeah, we're gonna talk about socks on all this stuff. Family member of mine was involved in a, in the gulf oil spill cleanup. So these folks are working and I was talking with somebody, right, 10, 12, 14 hour days, 16 hour days. I was talking about what, you know, already the employers are soliciting people for the clean up down in Florida. A lot of ads went on indeed. And some of the other services, uh, tonight, uh, shut down central on Facebook was one of them. And I know we had this discussion out there. The people are working 16 hours a day, seven days a week, do you think that they had time to do laundry And a lot of these folks, younger guys, hey first time away from home they're 18 or 19 year old. What are they gonna do any day that they have off their living la vida loco as they used to say in the late nineties, early two thousands. They're having fun and everything else. They're not washing socks. So what happens? They end up going and getting trench foot blisters, Everything else with that getting blisters that get infected and my had a family member get actually accept this at what they used to call blood poisoning right out there? Blood poisoning out there dealing with his feet. He ended up all those losing a foot. He ended up in the hospital on an I. V. Drip for antibiotic was a major thing with him. So socks are important. Are your socks clean? Are you, do you have clean socks? Do you have wet socks? Are your socks cushioned? All of this stuff goes in there. Are they wicking socks? Foot issues are really bad. Especially if you have people who are either prediabetic or or who are diabetic who may have neuropathy. So make sure your socks are in good shape, make sure you have. I'm not gonna make a recommendation but make sure that you have appropriate socks uh with that right and blisters check your feet all the time, Make sure your footwear fits all the time. That's something that you really need to worry about with feet. The other thing is this chemical exposures you're gonna say, okay, you are talking about that chemical exposures. One of the ways that you can get a chemical exposure is through your feet, right? It's the old wives tale where not to ward off vampires. They put garlic and shoes used to be, they did that. And uh eastern europe and soon you won't have garlic on the breath. So the story goes, I I don't recommend trying it, especially if you want to go on a night on the town unless you're looking for a mate. That's into that. But uh now basically you can get a chemical exposure from that and it's really imperative that you get the chemical compatibility chart. And uh I know what you're dealing with. So uh some of the more funnier injuries I've seen with people choosing inappropriate footwear was the guy was on a road crew and they were pouring uh asphalt, asphalt comes down and they're like 400° something and his boots melted. He wasn't hurt. But it looked very funny to see melted neoprene boots. I thought it was pretty funny, at least. Never, never saw, never saw that happen anywhere else. And uh you know, he never lived that one down. Uh The other thing is this the natural rubber latex nuke fruits on oil spill cleanups. What happens to latex when you are dealing with uh oil and dissolves on contact? It's a major problem with that. So they become more and more slippery. Can you use it? Have I used them on uh, oil spills? Yeah. When I know I'm going to have incidental contact. If I'm gonna be in the groove, you know, with this stuff and get grossly deacon, I'm gonna have something on a little more appropriate. But even so, uh, there's not as many different types of protective boots as there are protective gloves. So they're thicker. You gotta worry about breakthrough time. You have to worry about all that stuff. Breakthrough per me a shin penetration. You have to worry about all that stuff. And so you may have to go with a thicker boot and guess what? You may have to replace it. Why are you know the these boots are cheap enough? Right to where, why are we uh, why mess around get the appropriate mood that you need for that army one second. So that's basically what I have for you folks today. And I wanted to go and thank you folks for listening. If you want health and safety training, we also do disaster out outreach training for disaster response workers. The 7.5 in the 15 hour courses. Give us a call at eight for 5 to 695772 and for safety wars. This is jim proposal. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast. Are those of the host and its guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within this podcast are only examples. It should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information, assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the creator of the podcast. J Allen in the professional safety community, communication and planning are just a few keys to your program success. The question many practitioners have is where do I start dr J Allen, the creator of the safety FM platform and host of the rated R safety show has built a global foundation to help you along the away go to safety FM dot com and listen to some of the industry's best and most involved professionals including Blaine Hoffman with the safety pro sam Goodman with the hop nerd Sheldon primus with the safety consultant Jim proposal with Safety Wars, Emily L Rod with unapologetically bold and many others As individuals, we can do great things. But as a team, we become amazing, dial into safety FM dot com today and surround yourself with a powerful force of knowledge and support