How Personal Protective Equipment Can Help Make or Break Your Operations
The presence of machines and other heavy equipment makes construction workers at risk of sustaining physical injuries in the workplace. As a worker, your employer must require you to wear the right safety gears or personal protective equipment (PPE) at all times to lessen your chance of getting hurt while in the workplace.
Construction PPE depends on the assigned task
Although it’s inevitable for construction workers to get hurt while doing their jobs, a work injury lawyer in Murray highly believes that employers are required by the law to take measurable actions to reduce or completely eliminate workplace hazards.
Depending on your post as a construction worker, you need to at least wear a safety hat and glasses while at the workplace to reduce your chances of getting hurt. In some situations, a supervisor may require you to wear additional safety gears when performing a job. In some construction or renovation sites, workers might need to wear protective gloves, hearing protection, full face shields, construction grade splash-proof goggles, protective masks, and harness. Welders, on the other hand, are required to wear leather apparels and heavily tinted goggles during work.
All PPE should meet the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards, which means that employers should not buy cheap and substandard safety gears.
If you think you need additional PPE to complete a task, it’s important that you let your immediate supervisor know about it. Aside from providing the right PPE, employers are also required by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to train you on how to properly wear, adjust, and take off safety gears.
Notify your superiors if you think that your PPE does not fit you right. Improperly fitted PPE is not only uncomfortable, but it may also increase your injury risks. A loosely fitted hard hat, for example, can cause you serious or fatal head injuries if a hammer or brick hits your head accidentally.
OSHA is serious in upholding workers’ rights to safety
OSHA protects all qualified workers in the U.S. by continuously upholding their rights to safety. Negligent employers may face sanctions and settle hefty fines if OSHA finds out that they’ve compromised workers’ safety.
An OSHA news recently revealed that a contractor faces a $106,078 in penalties for failing to protect excavators from harm while fitting pipes in Georgia. Authorities from OSHA revealed that workers are at high risk of sustaining fatal injuries “in a matter of seconds” if a trench accidentally breaks down during work. Aside from wearing proper PPE, the contractor should protect the workers by providing a shield trench wall while doing work.As a construction worker, it’s important that your employer provides you with the right safety gears and proper training. The OSHA upholds workers’ rights by requiring employers to keep their workers safe at all times. If you think that you sustained workplace injuries as a result of your employer’s negligence, a work injury lawyer may help you file a complaint for you to possibly get benefits you need for recovery.
