Page 82 - Occupational Health & Safety, July/August 2019

RESPIRATORY PROTECTION
ous exposure level, you may not be able to see it. So which way do you run? If you can’t see it, you don’t know! People will panic and then take their next breath, which could be a big breath of chlorine or another chemical, and now you’ve created a dangerous situation for yourself. My point is, we need to stop using our lungs as the canary in the coal mine.
“One of the other biggest misconceptions regarding escape res- pirators is, ‘If I have it on me, then I am protected.’ Normally these respirators come in packaging that is very difficult to open. I often do simulations with people and have them pretend there is a leak and they need to don their respirator in 10 seconds or less. But be- cause of the excessive packaging, I see them struggle and virtually never get the respirator on in time. That’s one fallacy—it’s there, but it really isn’t readily available and useable.
“Another overlooked aspect is that we need to test these respira- tors. What I mean by test is just simply breathe through it. Several times, I have seen people put a respirator in their mouth and then take a breath, and all of a sudden, they get a bunch of carbon in their mouth. The respirator has obviously been damaged or bro- ken. So now they are faced with, ‘Do I breathe chlorine, or do I breathe carbon?’ Neither one is a good choice. Simply testing the respirator before use could prevent this issue.
“A third issue is people assuming they know how to use the res- pirator without the proper training. I’ve seen people put nose clips attached to the respirator up their nose instead of on the outside of their nose. It sounds comical, but they could really put themselves
in a dangerous situation if they are not properly trained how to use the respirator.
“Lastly, I want to reiterate that people overestimate how much time that they have to don a respirator. People think they are going to have minutes to get a respirator, so they will keep their respira- tor in their truck 30 feet away or somewhere not on their body, because maybe it was an inconvenience to carry to the work site. They might think they have up to five minutes to retrieve and don the respirator when the reality is, they DON’T!”
Interviewer: “How can workers be prepared to handle respira- tor failures or malfunctions?”
Brian: “I will give you an example here with a supplied air respi- rator, with an escape cylinder. We go through our training, we watch a video, we learn how to put this equipment on, but many people don’t really train with loss of air and being able to get that escape respirator on. Being in a harmful atmosphere and having your sup- plied air respirator fail and not knowing how to use your escape cylinder, that’s not the time you want to figure out how to use it. Something that we do for training is, while we are training while no one is at risk, first we go through how they work. We walk the tech- nicians or the plant operators through the use of the supplied air respirator and escape cylinder. Then, in a controlled environment where they are not going to be harmed, we shut the air off and have them get to the escape cylinder and get the air turned on. By doing that in a controlled environment, it takes away that panic and fear had it been in a real situation, and that goes right back to training.”
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76 Occupational Health & Safety | JULY/AUGUST 2019
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