Shooting Earplugs for under $13.00? Yep!

Up till now if you wanted to protect your hearing and still be able to communicate at the shooting range, your only option used to be electronic earmuffs like the Tactical Pro which are well over $200.00 each. With the advent of the Moldex BattlePlug, that’s no longer the case.

For under $13.00 (no, it’s not a typo!), you can now get the Battleplug earplug.

BattlePlugs Impulse Earplugs

Moldex^® BattlePlugs are an authorized hearing protector for use by soldiers and Department of the Army civilians.

Patented BattlePlugs use a unique filter built into the plug body to instantaneously reduce dangerous, sudden impulse noises (e.g. weapons fire) plus allow for easy communication and improved awareness in the cap open position – NRR 9dB.

• Now an authorized hearing protector for use by soldiers and Department of the Army civilians.
• Dual Mode Protection:
  – Open cap to hear commands and for loud
  blasts: NRR 9dB.
  – Closed cap for continuous/steady noise and impulse noise protection: NRR 24dB.
• The louder the blast, the more noise reduction (in open position).
• Cap is easy to open and close, in-ear.
• Easy to see when cap is in open or closed mode.
• Easy to clean.

wash and wear again

BattlePlugs can be washed and reused. Each pair comes with a Pocket-Pak^® carrying case to keep them clean when not in use. The smooth shape slides easily into your pocket. No sharp edges.

complete system

Each bag contains a pair of BattlePlugs and a cord, Pocket-Pak carrying case, chain, and instructions.

Available in three sizes: small, medium and large.
NOTE – 80% of users will fit a medium, if you need a small or a large purchase the small or large replacement pods and switch them out.

Click here to purchase the BattlePlug earplugs

Thermo-man Videos

Yesterday, June 26th, we burned up a lot of clothing in an effort to show what various materials do when exposed to fire. We exposed untreated cotton, treated cotton, Nomex, Nomex with an FR undercoat, a Tychem chemical protection suit and a Dupont ThermalPro chemical suit to 1,700 degrees of flames for 4 seconds. The results were pretty impressive.

Rather than tell you all about it, however, I’m going to let you view the results for yourself.

Here is the list along with the link to the Youtube video that we uploaded last night after all the burning was done:

· Untreated cotton shirt and jeans http://youtu.be/PpCjT4gHebA

· Treated cotton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVTdFVgvQpQ

· Nomex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NV8-RHhaT8

· Nomex with Under Armour http://youtu.be/r4H-p8OPsSY

· Tychem Chemical Suit http://youtu.be/DwMjia3oatE

· Tychem ThermoPro Protective Suit http://youtu.be/BJsbeVVgbY4

Now the question you’ve got to ask yourself is “If I was going to send my 18-year old daughter/son off to work in a refinery what garment would I want them to be wearing?”

THERMO-MAN Demo today at our Kent Location

If you are in the Seattle area today…

Join us for a DuPont™ THERMO-MAN® demonstration.
Don’t miss this opportunity to see a demonstration of DuPont™ Thermo‐Man®, one of the world’s most advanced thermal burn injury evaluation systems. Thermo‐Man® consists of a life‐size manikin and 122 thermal sensors used to predict level, extent, and location of potential burns of whole garments in simulated flame exposures. We will be showing burn injury comparisons between a variety of protective apparel, and flameresistant
protective clothing made of DuPont™ Nomex® with 40 years of proven performance and protection.
Bring your own garments to burn if you want to see how they perform!

Date and Times
■ Date: June 26, 2013
Showtimes: 10:00- 11:30AM & 12:30 – 2:00PM

Location
■ National Safety Inc.
6910 196th St
Kent WA

MAP IT

Sponsored by
■ National Safety, Inc.
Big Bill
DuPont

Free Kindle Fire Giveaway at each of the sessions.
(Bring a business card to enter the drawing)

Top Ways we injure our genitals

A new article published last year in the Journal of Urology has identified the most common ways we injure our… uh… private parts! Apparently men are injured more often than women (69% vs. 31%) and most injuries resulted, not surprisingly, from sports (wear a cup man!). 37.5% of injuries occurred to 18 to 28 year olds (again, no surprise there!).

Curious what the top most common injuries were?

1. Bicycles
2. Razors, clippers, trimmers and scissors
3. Zippers
4. Falls in the bathroom (most of these were people 65 or older)
5. Basketball
6. Baseball & Softball
7. Skiing & Snowboarding

A further note of interest, injuries from source # 2 have increased by 500% from 2002 t0 2010 (some trends are more dangerous than others I guess!).

 

Sources:

• The Journal of Urology (http://www.jurology.com/article/S0022-5347%2812%2905440-7/abstract)

• The Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/11/the-top-ways-we-injure-our-genitals/265106/)

Miller Fall Protection Fall Clearance Calculator

We’ve talked before on this blog about the “fall clearance” issue. Essentially fall clearance has to do with the distance you need to account for when taking a fall in order not to hit the ground. What this means is that if you are 6 foot tall, wearing a 6 foot lanyard, accounting for stretch and other factors, you will need to have 18 feet off fall clearance as illustrated below.

Because factors vary (You might be using a self-retracting lifeline or an 8 foot lanyard, for example) each application should be looked at separately and the fall clearance calculated for each instance. Fortunately, Miller Fall Protection has a fall clearance calculator that you can use to determine your fall clearance. Just type in your variables and it’ll give you your fall clearance, illustrated as in the above image.

Great little tool to keep everyone safe!

 

Tether your tools

When we talk about safety when dealing with heights, we usually think about fall protection and rarely, if ever, about falling objects. Dropped items (tools, bolts, screws, hard hats, etc…) is actually among the top four most frequent work-related injury events accounting for 6% of all workplace fatalities; it also accounts for 2/3 of all fatalities in the “Struck by” category.

If we further look at all the time that is lost climbing back down to retrieve the tool, account for the damage it does to equipment below, account for lost or broken tools because they’ve been dropped from heights, the issue suddenly escalates into a much bigger problem than we might have thought it was at first glance.

While standards remain ambiguous and unclear, there seems to be little doubt that OSHA and state safety bureaus will start looking at this sooner than later. It’s hard to imagine that they would ignore a problem that accounts for 6% of fatalities in the workplace.

Ergodyne has been one of the leaders in this area. Here’s a sampling of what they have done to address the issue:

Hard Hat Tethers – Lanyards that attach to the hard hat to make sure that it doesn’t plummet to the ground if it should fall off.

Available in a Clamp style Hard Hat Tether or a Buckle style Hard Hat Tether

Hoist buckets designed to securely hoist the tools and equipment up to where they are needed.

Available in a 150lbs capacity canvas bucket with a lid or without a lid or a synthetic leather bag with a lid.

Bolt bags with a one-handed cinch-up top for keeping gear safe and secure.

Available 25 lbs tall safety bolt bag or a regular 25 lbs safety bolt bag

Tool Pouches – Designed with D-rings for tethering the tools

Available in a 16 Pocket Tool Pouch with a hook and loop closure or a 16 pocket Tool Pouch with a buckle closure.

Tool Tethers

Available as a 5 lbs tool tether, 10 lbs tool tether with a barrel lock attachment, a 10 lbs tool tether with a carabiner attachment, 20 lbs tool tether and a 2 lbs wrist tool tether.

Does your Eyewash / Shower meet the ANSI Code?

Let’s face it, trying to decipher the ANSI guidelines isn’t exactly a piece of cake. Even something as simple as an eyewash station or a drench shower has over 17 different specs that have to be met in order for it to be compliant.

Don’t just assume that because you purchased your eyewash or drench shower from a safety supplier it must be up to code. Regulations have changed and even if it’s a newer piece of equipment doesn’t mean that it’s up to snuff.

Fortunately, Haws has got you covered with a checklist that you can download to walk you through the process of making sure that your eyewash / shower is compliant.

Simply download the 2-page pdf and walk through the list of specs to make sure that your equipment means the regs.

If your backup is your primary than you don’t have a backup

My wife and I had this discussion last night because she’s slowly gotten into the habit of leaving her curling iron on, trusting in the backup safety feature that turns it off after a certain amount of time, rather than unplugging it. I told her that she shouldn’t make the backup safety feature her primary way of making sure that the iron wasn’t left on all day. If the backup safety feature should fail the iron would end up on all day and might potentially start a fire.

I did get her permission to talk about this from her and, to her credit, she agreed and said she’d try to make sure she unplugged the iron from now on (time will tell if she actually does because habits are really hard to break).

It did get me thinking about this truth however, especially as it applies to safety in the workplace. If you make you backup your primary you don’t have a backup and you defeat the purpose of the backup, putting yourself at risk.

This can apply to almost any area of safety. Let’s take the example of confined space. Confined Space entry requires that anyone going into the confined space have a primary and a secondary means of entry. In most instances, the ladder that is mounted on the inside of the well is the primary and the line that is attached to the D-ring on your body harness is the secondary. If something happens and you slip off the ladder or aren’t able to physically climb the ladder, someone else outside the well can hoist you out. If, however, you use the hoist that is intended as your backup as you primary means of entry and/or egress, you’ve now made your backup your primary and you have no backup. if something goes wrong (say the line breaks or fails somehow) the worker plummets to the ground; trust me, he isn’t going to be able to suddenly grab onto the ladder.

Another example, in everyday life, is the seat belt and the airbag. You don’t ignore the seat belt just because your car is equipped with airbags, nor to you deactivate the airbags because you’ve got seat belts. Both are necessary.

There are many more examples of safety areas that have redundancy built into them in order to make sure that a worker isn’t just protected, but protected even if something goes wrong. Redundancy is important, especially in areas where lives are at risk. They might be inconvenient at times but they are designed the way they are for maximum protection. Don’t eliminate your primary in favor of the backup or you no longer have a backup.

 

Powerpoints for Safety Training

Slideshare.net is a file sharing website for powerpoint presentations. I have, over the years, uploaded several powerpoints to this website and they are available to you free of charge.

Simply download them and use them as you need.

After seeing a report that almost 100,000 people had viewed these presentations and over 1,000 had downloaded them, I realized that I had probably never mentioned them here on this blog so, to make up for that, here the links for you to have a look and download if you feel that they might be of use to you.

Confined Space from SafetyGuy08

Confined Space Training from SafetyGuy08

Ppe Training from SafetyGuy08

The Basics Of Respiratory Protection from SafetyGuy08

Understanding the dangers of “Dry” and “Delayed” Drowning

Most of us understand the dangers of drowning. We make sure that our children are watched when they are swimming, make sure they learn to swim, protect infants from accidentally falling into pools and buckets of water, etc… What many of us don’t know is that there are two other forms of drowning that you need to protect against, namely “Delayed drowning” and “Dry drowning”.

The tragic death of a 10-year old boy in Goose Creek, South Carolina brought this into focus back in 2008. Unfortunately, the boys’ death was mistakenly called “dry drowning” instead of what it actually was, “delayed drowning”.

What is “delayed drowning”?

Delayed drowning occurs when water gets into the lungs. Even though the victim may appear fine for a while, the water in the lungs impedes lung function and essentially “drowns” the victim, usually within a couple of hours.

What is “dry drowning”?

Dry drowning, in contrast, occurs without the presence of water in the lungs. It is somewhat unclear how dry drowning occurs but it occurs in water, not hours later, as in the case of “delayed drowning”. It is believed that dry drowning can occur in one of two ways:

1. The shock of the cold water may cause the heart to stop. In this instance, the victim never inhales water into the lungs; he or she stops breathing because death has occurred so no water enters the lungs.
2. A sudden rush of water into the throat causes the air ways to shut to keep the water out of the lungs. Because the air way is shut, however, air can’t get in either and the victim asphyxiates.

However dry drowning occurs, it occurs in much the same situation as regular drowning so that many cases of dry drowning look like regular drowning.

Delayed drowning, however, is very different and not nearly as common. Another instance of delayed drowning in 2012 has media calling it “extremely rare”. Death, in these cases can happen anytime after inhaling the water for up to 48 hours. It is therefore extremely important to know what to look for and pay close attention to signs that may point to a problem.

Symptoms of potential delayed drowning:

1. Sudden weariness or tiredness.

2. disorientation or confusion

3. Unusual behavior

4. Coughing and/or difficulty breathing

5. Heaviness in the chest

The first 3 of these symptoms come from oxygen deprivation. Because the brain isn’t being supplied with the necessary oxygen, it gets tired, drowsy, confused, erratic or disorientated. The fourth and fifth symptoms are just a physical reaction to having water in the lungs.

The purpose of this post isn’t to have parents panic every time that a child coughs when he or she is in the pool. It’s pretty hard to spend a day at the beach or the pool without at least one episode of coughing. The important thing to remember is that the coughing is the child’s protective system doing what it is supposed to do; the lungs are expelling anything that isn’t supposed to be there and it works well.

If, however, the coughing is more severe and won’t stop or if there was a near drowning episode, it is advisable to take your child (or the adult) to the hospital to have him or her checked out properly. Make sure the attending physician understands the concern you may have concerning delayed drowning and have the person in question properly checked out. If there is water in the lungs they will be able to take care of the problem.