Wearing the right safety wear and using the right safety equipment is important in many industries. From making sure that you wear the right eye and face protection when you are working with chemicals in a lab to making sure that you are up to date on all of the required safety and health programs, how safe you are on the job is often dependent on equipment, apparel, and training. And while it is a company’s job to make sure that workers are properly trained and are wearing the proper safety equipment, every individual should make sure that he or she is taken all of the required precautions.
In a time when more and more medical cures and engineering discoveries rely on the complicated work done in scientific labs around the country, it should come as no surprise that there are entire days set aside for manager and employee training on a certain areas like eye and face protection and other kinds of personal protective clothing. Having a safe workplace should be the goal of all companies, and it is for this reason that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) publishes specific guidelines for working with various kinds of chemicals and in different kinds of settings.
Consider these facts and figures about the protection guidelines that are in place to make sure that workers are safe when they are on the job:
- U.S. factories created $5.3 trillion worth of goods in the year 2016. That is nearly 33% of the nation’s gross domestic product, and more than any other sector. The value of these goods diminishes, however, if employees are not safe while they are on the job.
- Unfortunately, thousands of workers are blinded every year from work-related injuries that could have been prevented with the proper use of protection for the eye and face.
- Eye injuries cost U.S. companies as much as $300 million a year in lost production time, worker compensation, and medical expenses.
- Permeation is a process by which a chemical passes through a protective film, one example being a glove. Breakthrough time and rate are the two values represented in the ratings of permeation resistant clothing.
- 20 million workers use personal protective equipment (PPE) on a regular basis to protect them from job hazards, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
From eye and face protection to specific details about the kind of chemical suits that some workers are required to wear, OSHA guidelines and frequent training updates keep work places both productive and safe.