Safety practices; more than just wearing PPE
Sarah Morris, Trees SC Executive Director
Every morning we are with a group in a crew room, or on the tail gate of our trucks, or at our job site reviewing our safety plan for the day. We are trained and trained about chainsaw safety, proper personal protective gear, traffic patterns, hydration, and the list goes on and on. The safety lectures may sometimes feel a little redundant and perhaps boring; yet we must listen. It might mean the difference in someone going home that day.
The ANSI – Z133 Standards have been built over many years with dedicated industry leaders meeting each year to review, renew and reinforce the Standards relevance. The publication establishes safety standards for tree care operations such as pruning, trimming, repairing, maintaining, and removing trees in the United States. The purpose of the Z133 standard is to provide safety criteria for both workers and the public. I am grateful to those hard-working folks putting their time and energy into our safety.
One of the things we should pay more attention to is the safety issues that are our personal responsibilities. We may never have been cut by a chainsaw or a pruning saw, hit by a runaway falling limb or our foot run over buy a driver going too fast and on the phone in a work zone; but we probably have experienced the hazards of nature.
I have never cut myself with a chain saw but I have been stung by yellow jackets, red wasp, bitten by fire ants, dropped into a stump hole, been covered up in chiggers and slipped and fallen on an icy road.
These things and many more are in our environment every day, we usually don’t discuss them during our safety meetings but perhaps it is each one of our personal responsibilities to take note. See the tall grass that might hide a poisonous snake, look for the depressions in the leaves that might indicate a hole waiting to sprain an ankle, look for the fire ant mounds and see the steady stream of yellow jackets flying from the ground.
Injuries caused by our environment can be no less than completely aggravating and far beyond. It is our responsibility to “look up, look down, and all around” or to be aware of situational hazards.
Understanding and following the ANZI Standards and wearing the correct PPE for the job should certainly be followed but don’t forget about the bugs and bees too!
For information on fire ants and snakes, check out these links:
https://scdhec.gov/health/diseases-conditions/insect-or-animal-borne-disease/fire-ant-sting
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