Thread: Treted Pine - ACA ACQ and CCA sawdust

Originally Posted by BobL

A more community wide example of use of PPE is mains electricity. instead of having some laws that govern who can install electrical connections (oh the expense!), covering conductors with insulation (more expense), suspending conductors from high poles or putting them underground (even more expense), we could just lay them uninsulated on the footpath and tell everyone to wear gloves and boots and allow anyone to connect into the line with a couple of battery clamps.

Wont they earth out?

Originally Posted by BobL

This sort of thing worries me a bit because this line of thinking leads to many more injuries and deaths than are needed. The first thing wood workers should do when they think about taking on something new (ie buying that big router) is take a coffee break and think about what they are going to do and apply the hierarchy of control. .....

Bob,

I did say originally that PPE must be used in conjunction with other high order controls.

Yes, the heirarchy of controls are proven to work in industry when it isn't a mindless tick and flick paperwork exercise. It will work in recreational pursuits if it is a genuine attempt to reduce risk and if people have the knowledge, means and resources to implement them. Very few hobbyists have the knowledge plus a sympathetic minister for finance and the luxury to own new machines with modern safety features, or to be able to bear the cost to engineer out many commonly encountered hazards. They can learn to implement the eliminate, substitute, isolate processes etc with what they own or have access to and they can afford good PPE. Not ideal but practical and affordable and will reduce risk. A HQ pair of medium impact spectacles (say uvex) and face shield (Armadillo) are arround $45.

Education about recognising and minimising risk with a focus on implemention of affordable and practical solutions is long overdue in recreational wood hobbies, and metal for that matter.

The available Emergency Department presentation statistics support my my reasoning for HQ PPE. A very significant number of the presentations to ED's are for eye, facial, brow and head injuries that the severity of which most definitely would have been lessened and perhaps even eliminated had the DIYer or hobbyist been wearing what is enforced as mandatory PPE in almost all similar "work" environments - eye protection and face / head protection. Both of which are a rare sight in many home & club workshops.

The other common injuries for wood hobbyists are tangles with operating machinery, powered and hand tools suffered from an oversight or ignorance of safe working proceedures! Catastrophic injuries and deaths are also frequent enough, and rising in my opinion, to be a very significant concern.

PPE will not stop the major injuries or deaths but education on how to recognise hazards and risk will and so will raising awareness through discussions on forums like WWF. Putting on the PPE may also prompt hobbyists to stop and think a while, and start the hazard identification / risk mitigation process.

You can't implement high order controls unless you know how, and have been trained to use safe work proceedures, how to recognise hazards and how to implement hazard controls ..... but hang on aren't education and training lowly administrative controls in the heirarchy pyramid!

Soundmans comment above is a very good example of hazard awareness & identification, risk analysis, potential controls - elimination (don't do it) or substitution (alternate processes or products) then an assessment of the controls practicality, effectiveness (are we just taking on another hazard of similar risk) etc in a hobbyists application / situation. Good one!