Reprinted from Grain Journal September/October 2018 Issue
Trevor Keating | Safety Director | Prairie Ag Partners | Lake Preston, SD
“Our top piece of safety equipment is our gas meter, because often you can detect problems with sight, sound, or smell, but certain gases, like carbon monoxide, are impossible to detect. So, for example, with confined spaces, we need to be able to have a machine test that area. Humans are not able to detect the level of gas that we’re walking into without one of those monitors.
“Fall protection is another big one. It’s kind of an everyday deal for us, especially on the grain side with all the confined spaces. Also, going up on top of bins and certain points – there are times when we need to access places that are outside of the normal working platforms. That means we will be harnessed and tied off properly and making sure to use the proper anchor points. Fall protection also is used for railcar loadout.
“Eye protection is probably the next most important piece of PPE that we use. It seems like that’s a tough one to deal with from our experience. Of course, we’re out of South Dakota here, and a calm day for us is wind under 15 mph. We get a lot of dust, dirt, and debris blowing around. Even the sand from the gravel can blow up and get you in the face, so whether it’s something as simple as safety glasses or even using ski goggles to protect from dust and debris, it just seems like we’re trying to fight that constantly. We also use eye protection, of course, when we’re dealing with power tools, hot work, compressed air, or liquid fertilizers.”
Tim Wright | Director of Corporate Safety and Facility Maintenance | United Grain Corporation | Vancouver, WA
“I believe that the greatest safety tools we have are training and common sense. To progress our safety culture, we have a minimum of monthly safety meetings, each one on a different topic and given by a different employee. This keeps everyone thinking about safety. We also include in any of these meetings any new or updated PPE that we see in the industry in an effort to always be looking forward to improving our safety culture, to get people to ask questions, and to show everyone in our company that it is always safety first!”
Larisa Maue, GSP | EHS Manager | Top Ag Cooperative, Inc. | Okawville, IL
“I believe lockout devices, air monitoring equipment, and fall protection equipment are our most valuable pieces of safety equipment. We’re in the process of preparing for harvest, so we are cleaning out a lot of bins. To perform our bin entries safely, there are four critical pieces of equipment necessary: lockout device, safety harness, safety lifeline, and air monitor. The lockout device guarantees equipment will not start up while our employees are inside the bin. The air monitor is extremely important, because it allows us to continuously monitor inside the bin to determine if acceptable entry conditions are being maintained during the course of our entry. Finally, the harness and lifeline will prevent our employees from sinking into the grain and can be utilized if we would need to rescue an employee from inside the bin.”
Doug Green | Safety Liaison | Ursa Farmers Cooperative | Canton, MO
“High-visibility shirts and vests are a pretty high priority for us in terms of safety equipment that we use at our facilities. Our locations are pretty fast-paced with lot of trucks coming and going, so keeping our employees visible is really important to us.
“I also think hand-held radios are a critical piece of safety equipment. As far as PPE goes, radios help make sure we keep good lines of communications open with everyone at all times, and that’s always a priority when we’re trying to keep people safe.
“Also, air monitoring has become a big part of our PPE when it comes to bin entry and confined space, which present potentially hazardous situations for our employees.”
Doug Dean | Safety Manager | The Scoular Co. | Imperial, NE
“The single most important piece of safety equipment is our ability to recognize and identify risk. Educating and empowering employees to see the risks in everything they do and every time they do it will protect them more than any other PPE and is the first step in proper utilization of all other PPE. I am a firm believer that if employees are taught to recognize a hazard and be empowered to either step back or find a safe solution to complete the task, then safety wins!”
Bruce Rogge | Corporate EHS Manager | J. D. Heiskell & Company | Elkhorn, NE
“As far as PPE, we’re putting a lot of emphasis on fall protection harnesses, retractable lanyards, those types of things. With the revisions to OSHA regulations on walking-and-working surfaces, we have been emphasizing compliance with that and providing good elevated work platforms and ladders that are compliant and easy to use.
“Another very important piece of safety equipment we use is a filtering face piece or respirator, and we use the N95 dust masks in our feed mills, too. At our grain facilities, there’s a lot of a fugitive dust, so we need to protect the employees with dust masks. And then a third area that we’ve been focusing on lately would be our arc flash PPE – flash-rated clothing, face shields, and hand protection that keep employees safe under those hazardous conditions.”
Ben Kitzmiller | Safety and Environtmental Operations Lead | General Mills Inc. | Minneapolis, MN
“Fall protection is our number one type of PPE, because it is used during some of our most dangerous tasks, including bin entry, confined spaces, and working from elevated platforms. Our second most important piece of equipment would be safety glasses, because they are protecting something so valuable.”
Andy Meinhart | Safety Coordinator | The Equity | Effingham, IL
“Eye protection, of course, is one of the most valuable pieces of equipment that we use. It’s required all the time while you’re at our facility, so that’s just one of the ways we try to eliminate any injuries from happening.
“Likewise, we require fall protection any time an employee is working more than 4 feet off the ground. It’s just one of the pieces of PPE with harnesses and lanyards that we require. When you’re on railcars or entering bins or confined spaces, for example, that fall protection can save your life. We also make sure the guys are inspecting their equipment every time before they use them, and then depending on each job, we evaluate what type of fall protection they need, whether it’s a harness, lanyard, or other safety equipment.
“And then also hand protection is a big one for us. It depends on what kind of work our employees are doing, but a lot of times that hand protection can really help to prevent injuries.”