PPE Pandemic Lessons
I am willing to bet that 90% of Americans wish they never had to learn the acronym PPE!
Have you learned any PPE Pandemic Lessons this year? What the hell is PPE anyhow?
PPE stands for Personal Protective Equipment and with this nasty COVID-19 virus spreading around the world and killing people it has become a hot topic in the incessant news cycle. There are no interesting sporting events going on at the same time so if you're staying home as a non-essential employee you might be stuck with the news cycle or time with your family. That's your choice but you can only take a finite amount of either!
What does dumb-dumb Freddy know about PPE lessons anyhow?
I have been making space-age polymers and working with generally nasty chemicals my whole professional life as a half-assed chemist. I really started in earnest in 1993 and one early assignment was making some urethane wire coating using toluene diisocyanate. This stuff does not play around as you can see if you click on the link for the chemical.
And if you get a chemical research job but are illiterate they give you come scary photos on the container
To handle TDI you need to wear proper PPE, even on the lab scale of a few hundred ML at a time which is about a cup if you're metric system challenged. At the time that meant you had to put on one-piece splash goggles (monogoggles), which are different and offer more protection from safety glasses. We also were encouraged to wear lab coats when handling certain nasty or corrosive chemicals like strong acids and there were absolutely no bare feet allowed in a working laboratory. We wore steel toes safety shoes. The real life saver for this chemical and some others like phenol and formaldehyde was the beloved respirator. I usually opted for the half face respirator which just covers your nose and mouth.
monogoggles and half face respirators are not recommended for distance running
When you work in an industry like chemical manufacturing you can't just hand out respirators to the employees and hope for the best. If you're a guy you have to be clean shaven for them to seal and protect properly and do something like an annual fit test to make sure they work and are sized correctly for when you really need them. The employers do this not because they love you and care if you are injured or killed but to protect themselves from rightful lawsuits. I'm sort of kidding with that comment. You also need to have a robust enough cardiovascular system to physically handle the demands of breathing through a respirator. In my experience you can do it pretty easily for the few minutes generally required but I have also worked a few hours straight in one of those encapsulated suits with supplied breathing air tanks strapped to my back and that was a bit of a physical hardship - not to mention sweaty.
why do we have this stuff?
The first time I brought a respirator home from work was about a month after September 11, 2001. I went outside my apartment in lovely and bucolic Saratoga Springs, NY. and smelled a strong scent of what I knew to be ammonium hydroxide, which you probably just know as ammonia. I remember thinking "what the fuck is this? has the Taliban stormed the gates of Saratoga?" I went inside to call the cops and see what was going on and it wasn't a followup terrorist attack at all but a refrigerant leak from a local ice cream factory. I brought a respirator home after that just in case. Plus, they're handy and very useful when dealing with dusty construction debris and using painting solvents like in Mrs. Smidlap's attic art studio. She wears those goggles more than I do in her studio and I have a couple of pairs of Uvex safety glasses for when I operate a power saw or drill but I don't use them to mow the lawn even though I should. I fear the local kid thugs might come and take my lunch money if they caught me mowing the lawn in safety glasses like a nerd! I also have half a dozen pairs of disposable soft ear plugs and around 10 pairs of those throw away blue nitrile gloves. Those are always handy if you need to do some light painting or work with some small greasy parts if you're fixing something. I like the non-powdered ones because some people are allergic to the powder.
It's a good thing we never throw anything out.
I also recently found a "biohazard preparation kit my employer gave us about 10 years ago during the H1/N1 health scare. It came with a digital thermometer and a pack with about 25 surgical type masks in it. I also have a couple of pairs of heavier and longer butyl rubber gloves that I used for a nasty job like Own a House? Get Dirty and Save Dollars! That was when I pulled apart some clogged drain pipes and encountered the dreaded and nasty Dookie Grease! I don't throw these out when I'm done I just wash 'em up with soap and water. I would also feel free to wash those blue nitrile gloves after a short use if I was down to my last couple of pairs. We have been carrying around a mask and pair of blue gloves when we run any errands during the current clusterfuck pandemic. Along this the rest of the PPE we store them in a plastic ziplock out of direct sunlight. I don't know what is recommended for the current conditions and surely don't want to hear it if anyone reads this and does what I do. You probably should never emulate me! Follow manufacturers' recommendations with any of this stuff. I do think it's a great idea to decontaminate a half face respirator and goggles with an alcohol wipe after you use it. Oh, those cartridges are also designed for a specific use like organic solvent vapors in my case. I'm pretty sure they are excellent for dust particles even if the cartridges are past expiration date.
I know one other thing. I would rather re-use something or have an expired cartridge in a real emergency if I didn't have a fresh one. By the way, I don't know if those half face respirators are useful against the virus du jour but my hunch is that they're better than zero if you are just a non-medical worker civilian. I got to wondering why all those N-95 masks were being thrown away and nobody had found a way to decontaminate those things with something like bleach or UV light. It was particularly interesting to see the nurses protesting about having to re-use PPE in an emergency and at first I though they just couldn't react to the situation with relaxed requirements. Then the answer hit me: these medical professionals are so buried in normal day-to-day procedures they dare not deviate. I am guessing it's like the procedures in manufacturing in that you must follow these exactly or you are risking your job. I'll bet the cruddy medical administrators of the world are holding these procedures and checklists over the people doing the real work of seeing patients like a Sword of Damocles. "We're watching you, wage slave. Don't slip up or make an honest mistake or it's your J.O.B.!"
I noticed one other PPE related mistake the other day. I was watching the daily press conference update from our NY State Governor, Andrew Cuomo. I grudgingly give him credit so far for fantastic crisis leadership and his direct speech. However, he had one of those high-demand N-95 masks and first mentioned how much more they are expensive they are now than 2 months ago. He was right about that but wrong when he said how simple they were as if anyone could make one. There is good reason why huge companies like 3M and Honeywell make huge number of these things. I'm about sure the specifications come in a binder about 3 inches thick with a queue of lawyers just waiting to them to slip up and make a mistake with some litigation. Even those tree hugging hippies at NPR said how technical these masks are here: Those N-95 face masks are surprisingly hard to make. Most of the technology, in my opinion, is in the super fine polypropylene mesh that makes the filters so effective against tiny particles. I know because this is the type of stuff I work on. Mine is not medical related but I also know these specialty things have a significant moat to be able to compete in a given market. You don't just start doing this shit in your garage, Andrew!
I also got to thinking about the disposable nature of these items must drive the eco-people nuts. You know, the ones who love the earth more than me? I guess I am not alone because I came across this from the CDC where they make the case for elastomeric (half face type like mine) respirators in US healthcare. This was written in 2017 and for me this is the key slide.
I"m not here to play Monday morning quarterback or place blame but it is interesting to me that it say right in the document that we experienced shortages of N-95's in 2003 and 2009. That wasn't very long ago. If it were up to me I would issue half face respirators for non-routine surge use that were cleanable. It has to be better than running out of the more comfortable model N-95 and being left with your drawers down, right? Seems like they could have used some old Smidlap country wisdom like: Do It Before it Becomes an Emergency
Well Smidlappers, do you find any of that interesting? Do any of you dorks wear PPE when you mow the lawn or just remove all the safety guards as soon as you buy a mower like my Dad used to? Do you have any PPE in your house for regular use or emergencies like this one? Have you learned any PPE pandemic lessons?
Protect yourself from dookie grease. No glove, no love. Those are PPE pandemic lessons.