The Importance of PPE at Work

The Covid-19 outbreak can be a significant test for many businesses. Besides, it also makes us rethink the workplace’s role, what we can do differently to keep good health and safety of people at work, and the importance of PPE to support people to have their best day at work. The importance of personal protective equipment (PPE) is to protect its user against health or safety risks at work.

The use of PPE at work is more important in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic because it exists as a preventative measure against the deadly virus. Hence, business owners must maintain adequate sources and supply of new PPE materials, such as surgical masks or respirators, gloves, sanitizer, disinfectant wipes, infrared thermometers, and other supplies to promote a clean, safe and healthy workplace.

Providing daily and weekly employee “health” kits will encourage people to work safely and responsibly. Workplace professionals should consider the process of welcoming external people into their buildings. To ensure it’s safe and secure for everyone, provide a variety of PPE in the reception area, including masks, gloves, anti-bacterial gel and tissues.

PPE is only one effective measure within a package that comprises administrative and environmental and engineering controls, as described in WHO’s Infection prevention and control of an epidemic- and pandemic-prone acute respiratory infections in health care:

1. Administrative controls include ensuring the availability of resources for infection prevention and control measures, such as appropriate infrastructure, the development of clear infection prevention and control policies, facilitated access to laboratory testing, appropriate triage, and placement of patients, adequate staff-to-patient ratios and training of staff.
2. Environmental and engineering controls aim at reducing the spread of pathogens and reducing the contamination of surfaces and inanimate objects. They include providing adequate space to allow the social distance of at least 1 meter to be maintained between patients and between patients and healthcare workers and ensuring the availability of well-ventilated isolation rooms for patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 disease.

Here are some of the importance of PPE at work:

Face Masks

Wearing a face mask at work helps prevent you from getting ill and helps keep your working environment safe and healthy. Now that the CDC has approved the use of face masks to protect the public from impacts of individual “aerosol “effects, which can spread the virus through even limited breathing, employers have duties concerning the provision and use of personal protective equipment (PPE) at work.

The key feature of the coronavirus is respiratory symptoms such as dry coughing. It spreads primarily through saliva droplets or discharges from the nose when an infected person coughs or sneezes. The importance of PPE at work such as a mask for the infected and those around them can stop anyone from developing coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath, chest tightness, or difficulty in breathing caused by inhalation of hazardous substances at work.

A face mask keeps saliva and discharges completely contained, protecting those around you. Besides, a mask protects healthy individuals from breathing in saliva droplets of an infected person. The most effective masks are N95 respirators and surgical masks. Disposable face masks should be replaced every day. Reusable masks will eventually become clogged and make it harder to breathe through – means the filter needs changing.

It is crucial that you learn how to check, put on, use, maintain, store, and dispose of your mask.

Gloves

Coronavirus can stay stable on surfaces for several hours, similar to the original SARS virus. For example, scientists found viable traces of COVID-19 two to three days after exposure on plastic and stainless steel. And because coronavirus is a virus (and thus isn’t exactly alive), you cannot necessarily kill the virus by disinfecting surfaces the way you would kill germs. The importance of PPE at work, such as safety gloves, prevents hands from being exposed to the virus on surfaces.

Since the virus can live without a host for quite some time, it’s astonishingly easy to spread the virus via a touch. Granted, touching someone with infected gloves is no better than touching them with your bare hands, but gloves do protect the wearer from exposure as long as you remove and dispose of them properly. It’s important to know that gloves do not provide complete protection from hand contamination. That’s why hand hygiene is so important before and after glove use!

Sanitizer

When it comes to preventing the spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19, nothing beats good old-fashioned handwashing. Regularly and thoroughly clean your hands with soap and water kills viruses that may be on your hands. However, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), if water and soap aren’t available, your next best option is to use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains 60 per cent alcohol.

Hand sanitizer is a handy, on-the-go way to help prevent the spread of germs when soap and water aren’t available. The importance of alcohol-based hand sanitizers at work is to keep you safe and reduce the spread of the new coronavirus. However, don’t forget to wash your hand with soap and water as soon as you can.

Gowns

Gowns are a type of PPE worn by essential workers to protect them from organisms in the environment, on equipment, or from an infected or colonized patient. An isolation gown is a non-sterile gown used to keep clothing from getting contaminated. These gowns are fluid resistant enough to keep body fluids away from clothing for a short time. Following CDC guidance for donning and doffing PPE compared to individual preferences can significantly impact the effectiveness of the preventive measures to reduce the risk of infections.

Infrared Thermometers or Thermal Fever Screening

The importance of thermal fever screening at work is to detect possible COVID-19 cases by conducting preliminary fever screening at the entrance and critical areas of your sites. Thus, allowing you to make real-time decisions on allowing visitors into your buildings, which will reduce any risk of contamination. Consider installing thermal imaging solutions that can automatically screen numerous people’s temperatures simultaneously and flag abnormal temperatures to lower the risk of virus transmission. We are at Atalian have hand-held and wall-mounted options for you to choose. Contact us for more info.

Signage

Signage is an essential element of communicating the new normal and reminding people to be socially distancing at work. Ideas include:

• Floor graphics to show people where / how to queue and what the social distancing rules should be. These are ideal in reception, the staff restaurants, in tea points, at vending machines, and on stairwells.
• Posters/graphics on walls to reinforce the social distancing message.
• Directional signage to remind people about single flow policies or which stairway to use.
• Signage to reinforce the 1-2 per person lift policy. Floor graphics in the lifts to show people where to stand to be safe.
• Posters/screens to communicate all the different things that the organization is doing to protect its people

Install signage to request people not to move the furniture, to explain how to use the space safely, to indicate the social distancing rules, and to instigate a single direction flow around a building so that people can pass in open spaces. Signage should detail how many people can use a specific room at any one time and what people should and shouldn’t do.

Your employee should be protected and well informed of the hazards they may be exposed to at work. Think of PPE as an essential precautionary at work to increase the quality of people’s workday. ATALIAN understands that this is a difficult time for many workers, especially essential workers. We hope to be a safety resource during this period.

We can supply a full range of PPE, including face masks, gloves, gowns, and signage. Our service provides logistical and supply-chain solutions with competitive delivery times (minimum order quantities apply). To find out more about our PPE solutions, please contact us.