Changes in PPE over the past Decade and PPE for the Female Workforce - Josh Hickey, Chandler Safety & Industrial Supplies

Tune in to hear Josh Hickey of Chandler Safety & Industrial Supplies discuss changes in PPE and PPE for the female workforce.

Transcript

Perley Brewer (Guest)   0:10
Welcome to today's podcast. My name is Pearlie Brewer and I will be your host. Today's podcast guest is Josh Hickey. Josh is an account manager for safety and industrial sales at Chandler sales in Saint John. Welcome, Josh. Thank you for agreeing to be with us today.

Hickey, Josh   0:27
Thank you, pearly. Happy to be here.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   0:30
Today's podcast is going to focus on two topics #1 the changes in personal productive equipment commonly referred to as PPE that has occurred over the last decade, as well as #2 the increased production of PPE designed specifically for the female workforce. Let's start Josh by getting you to tell us about your organisation, Chandler sales, and what kinds of products do you sell or lease or make available to your customers.

Hickey, Josh   0:56
Chandler sales is an Atlanta Canadian distributor.
We carry seven different divisions of products on top of the safety industrial where the PPE and that stuff will come into play. There's also apparel promotion.
Sanitation, Food Service, Office environments and alarm and com divisions. So anything at all relating to that stuff.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   1:21
So what kinds of changes have you seen in burst or particularly equipment over the years, people always used to say PPE, it's hard, it's uncomfortable, makes my job more difficult to do. What kinds of changes have you personally seen yourself?

Hickey, Josh   1:37
Well, to be honest with you, I'm into my third year of sales and I'm coming from a background of trades experience. I've been on the tools and worked around a lot of the different heavy industrial sites from Newfoundland and New Brunswick here over the past 20 years or so.
Now that I'm part of the other side of the business and procuring and selling these products, it's really neat to work with some of our vendor suppliers, manufacturers to learn and discover what they're doing and how they're making all that stuff better.
There's new technology when it comes to the materials on what it's made out of, how it's made.
The gloves are a big thing. I was a welder in my past life and I would always take off my gloves to handle and touch smaller products, bolts, pieces. You know, that kind of stuff and the course whenever you don't wear your PPE is when you get bit.
We're selling some new gloves now that are very dexterous or very thin.
Highest level cut protection on the market and and a very thin glove. It's almost like a disposable Nitro glove, like a box of 50 gloves that you would just go through, but these are.
The play I make with all of our customers is there's no excuse to take your gloves off to handle these things.
They're so thin you can handle smaller person pieces.
The materials and what they're made out of when it comes to like the hot work and you know, used to always be the big heavy leather welding jacket, an outer salty's new Fr materials, stuff like that to make it a bit more comfortable and have our folks keep wearing their PPE and and try to work through that stuff.
Yeah, impact protection is another one as well. And the glove line, a lot of people with back a hand injuries and stuff like that. So there's.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   3:23
What?

Hickey, Josh   3:32
More materials being added to gloves and padding to the back of the hand and vibrations. Another one that's been coming up a lot, gel palms and stuff like that to try to take the vibrations out of going into people's hands and arms and stuff like that.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   3:46
Pause, I said a moment ago. Always complain about equipment, for example being hot.
What kinds of changes have you seen and what? What can you offer to someone? Say that complaints about some of the equipment they're wearing, you know whether to classes team up and all this sort of thing, that that makes their job actually easier than they would have, say, a decade ago?

Hickey, Josh   4:10
Well, I might be corrected on this, but I I don't feel like a decade ago there were some of the products that we've sold, you know our our summers are getting much hotter, especially inland here in New Brunswick. We don't get that beautiful A/C Bay breeze from the the funding, but cooling products. There's a lot of new products out now that you could dip in water and freeze.
Cooling vests, cooling bandanas, all all this type of equipment that you know.
I was happy to just start wearing and getting into you get in some really hot environments and stuff like that. You.
You get heat stroked, so these new products and then a lot of different manufacturers. Suppliers are making their version of it, but there's, you know, different equipment that has fans built into it to keep air moving around or just keeping your core cooler. So you can stay on task longer. That's that's one that really popped out to me the other year. We sold a fair bit of it to to some businesses inland in the province.
Where it's, you know, obviously the humidity and the heat is that's bad enough, let alone if guys are having to do, you know, a nasty job or in a nasty spot that's uncomfortable and hot. You know. So yeah. Cooling gears. The big one that jumps out to me.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   5:28
Recently we've started seeing PPE being designed and sold specifically for the female audience. What have you seen so far in PPE for females?

Hickey, Josh   5:39
Me myself, trying to take care of the females in the workforce. It's it's a big struggle for ourselves and our manufacturers. I I really feel like we're we're still very much playing catch up to take care of the ladies.
Smaller gloves to the bigger gloves the the the big people to the small people, it's sometimes hard to find PPE to fit and we also need a a good fit because if not it it's gonna turn into another safety hazard so.
I know that most of my gloves years ago we would only carry the the medium and the large and the Excel for mostly the men in the workforce, but now we're into these.
Small double extra small gloves. But some suppliers manufacturers are getting ahead of it. There's.
A group that superior glove, we saw a lot of. They make a lady sized welding glove and it goes from a medium to small to an extra small and I know very much.
Maybe an interview down the road with somebody else here on the apparel side of Chandler could speak more to this, but.
You know, finding form fitting women's designs apparel.
To allow them to be comfortable and do their job.
But it's still very much a catch up game. There's not as many options for the ladies as opposed to obviously it was very much a male dominant workforce here up until the past couple decades where the the you know and I don't think anybody realised how fast the women entered the workforce and then jumped in and it's still a catch up game.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   7:19
So how was it selling to date? Are you getting more women coming in and asking for specific PPE?

Hickey, Josh   7:25
Very yeah, very much so.
You know the gloves. Like I say, it's one thing, but then, you know, we're we're all different shapes and sizes, men and women.
Now also we're we're bringing in and stocking carrying more products to have at hands.
Eyewear. You know our safety glasses, stuff like that.
Typically, the standard eyewear don't fit a petite lady or smaller gentleman you know, so we have narrow fitting eyewear, you know, the smaller glasses, the.
The new cuts and stitching into the apparel products to kinda take care of those folks, it's it's it's consulting I I you know I I know sales selling is the drive but I I view myself as more of a consultant to kind of go in and and talk to our workforce and and you don't go to work to find a solution to fit their problem be it something that fitting correctly or finding that right size glove or class or whatever the case may be.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   8:27
Finding any requests that are coming in or any areas that they're asking for, females are asking for that. You can't fulfil this time there that maybe that's going to be more of a catch up.

Hickey, Josh   8:39
Yeah, just like we already spoke it. It's it's everything. You know, we follow US equipment.
I've only found, I think 1 supplier that makes something specific to women.
It's it's stock, it's availability. It's manufacturers lead time. So you know, then you get into learning more about your manufacturer and your vendor. They're having problems producing their materials or having enough, you know, the minimum orders is something that usually ties a lot of us to going at a product or not. Obviously there needs to be some numbers to make it justified for everybody to go at it.
But I feel like that's getting some backing now as more and more women enter to work for us, it's it's it's you never seen him. When I was on the tools 20 years ago. But now it's every job site I walk on, there's, there's always a lady in the workforce. So it's still very much a catch up game.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   9:41
So obviously in health and safety, there's a lot more to to keeping folks safe than just PPE. What other kinds of items do you lease or sell to keep workplaces healthy and safe?

Hickey, Josh   9:55
Well, like I mentioned, it is pretty wide array here at Chandler when it comes to the apparel and promotional side of things, I know that.
Ffr, clothing, fire resistant fire retardant is something that's, you know, came to the market here some time ago and where we stock carry, sell that stuff and it comes to, you know, sanitation keeping our workplaces safe and clean. Obviously post COVID, we have a new appreciation for the cleanliness, you know, not just at home but on our job sites where we spend our time so.
Making sure that everybody's aware of, you know, disinfecting to sanitising and the difference and then spraying a product on to a surface and giving it a proper dwell time so it can clean before it's wiped off, things like that, you know.
I'm learning the new stresses of the office environment and being seated for some time. You know, that's a that's a different kind of physical stress on our body. So we sell ergonomic office environments. You know, we have.
Office chairs with lumbar adjustable arms so people can be comfortable, monitor arms to make sure everything's properly aligned. The reduced preventative next strains and stuff like that. You got desks now that you know, have some mechanisms in them that make them stay and so people can kind of get up and and get the blood movement again. Task lights at desks. You know, people aren't straining stuff like that.
And alarm of communications, I think speaks for itself.
And.
Basically.
A little bit of everything from Chandler goes into a workforce and also myself, like I say, I speak from a welding background, learning more about welding automation, a great company in Ontario, Galco International sells welding automation motion. Sometimes we don't got to have a guy on his hands and knees crawling around and and really exerting himself. Now we have.
You know, robotic welders, and we have track equipment and stuff like that. You can.
Put the WIP on the equipment and kinda keep your face and eyes and headed or that smoke and that contaminant and make it easier on the guys doing the task. You know automation is something that's really coming into the workforce more and more as the workforce isn't the same post COVID I know every business I talk to struggles to find a workforce, retain them and continue to grow.
And especially I think there's a growth shortage of our our trade spokes, men and women.
Doing the task at hand.
Like I say, covet really shook everything up for us and.
Industries and everything. Wanna keep growing. So I I've see more of the request or presence for doing things easier, better, faster. And that's where that automation and technology starts to come into play. But.
Yeah.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   12:57
What do you see in the area of fall protection?

Hickey, Josh   13:00
Fall protection. There's, you know, some companies years ago, if you were to take a fall and you're hanging off the edge. You know, obviously there's a rescue plan already in place. Hopefully. And you got a limited time while you're being suspended there to kind of get rescued before you pass out or, you know, more complications happen. Trauma straps are are being included.
In our follow rest equipment stirrups, basically you jump into to get the weight off your inner thighs for when you're being suspended.
There's new automation and self rescue equipments.
You know, leading Edge SLR self retracting lanyards made it a ribbons or steel cable. If they're in a nasty environment where there's a lot of cut hazards.
Some of the fall rest equipment now it's it's it's it's nice to wear you know it's it's not heavy, it's it's not cumbersome the the way that the design the product or built a spine into the back of it so you're not carrying all that weight on your shoulders it's it's distributed across your body and onto your hips more and again that's it's back to the earlier question right what's how do we keep people into the gear what's making it more comfortable and less cumbersome it's.
Guys can walk around with a a bit of gear on their back and that it's you could do it all day given a design and how it's made.
And every time you turn around, there's a new product, you know, rescue equipment and and poles, like I say.
Everybody's working at heights, so something that's always on the go.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   14:36
What about the area or topic of confined spaces?

Hickey, Josh   14:40
You can find space, it's, you know, a couple extra D rings to the shoulders for retrieval. And again, every every not every manufacturer. Most manufacturers have their spin or version on confined space. And again, you know, years ago would have been a rope and a pulley. But you have these different tripods and and retrieval systems for confined space applications where.
You know, we're not using a hand crank or pulling someone up on a rope kind of thing. You you got stuff that's set up to attach cordless drill and you can kind of whiz somebody out of a a bad situation pretty fast.
Uh, and then get confined space, you know, loops right into the difference in all the different gas monitors and all that detection equipment to make sure that people you know don't get it themselves into a situation where it's a nasty environment without them knowing. And a lot of that stuff's come a long way too, because.
Different hibernation cases. Some some products are good to come under the package and they're good for a few years, but you can kind of preserve the life of that if you have it in a special hibernation case.
All this stuff is very expensive equipment, so we want to make sure we're protecting it and getting the most out of it. While you know the workforce has it.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   15:57
One area that just concerned me as I've done workshops around the province over the last few years is is in the area of rescue, whether it's rescue at heights or rescue and confined spaces. Whatever. What do you? What have you seen as far as changes and what do you have available for organisations that want to opt your game when it comes to to rescue equipment?

Hickey, Josh   16:21
Well, first, I think obviously we're, we're we're coming way, way more safety focused as we grow and learn more of our industries and then technologies out there like I mentioned recently, I just kind of had my eyes on with a pass safety show I was at.
This self rescue pulley system basically if if I was in a my equipment broker I was in a man basket or a lift and I needed to get down. It's actually designed for me to go over the rail and I can descend control at 4 feet per second.
These are things I've never seen when I was on the tools. Uh, and it's just more, you know, as new safety people come into play. Uh, you know, everybody's kinda reviewing all their old records and plans and and you know it's it's it's good thing because things change on sites and and maybe that rescue plan didn't get updated.
So obviously the administrative control in that respect, but.
Yeah, like also this rescue poll system is really I seen the other day at telescopic lightweight aluminium pole that you're able to.
Slip a carabiner to the hook that if you were hanging over a rail and I needed to get at you. I can kinda send the pole down and attach an extra line to your D ring and then kind of retrieve you in that respect again.
My past life, I I I never seen equipment like this, so it's it's it's really neat and interesting to see the new innovations and to kind of bring it to market. It's actually something that a few of my customers are currently talking about too.
Make sure like you say that that gold bag that rescue bag is correct and the the right thing to have on site.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   18:10
We are using the biggest increase in demand when it comes to safety equipment today versus, you know, even 234 years ago.

Hickey, Josh   18:23
It's it's a sticky wicket we we want like I mentioned before.
Thin gloves. We want people to keep PPE on.
Trying to trying to find that there's there's no such thing as. I have the answer and this is it. It's very much still kind of. What are you doing? How are you doing? And why do you need to wear whatever PPE?
Employee education on how these ANSI standards represents, you know, our our cotton puncture abrasion resistance.
You know, knowing the workforce, knowing why they're wearing what they're wearing, but really the demand is sizing like we've mentioned before about women like I, I never carried size 5 gloves. This is a whole extra small, but now it's a, you know, kind of a standard stock item.
That, like I mentioned before, I I used to sell a lot of classes and gloves and that's, you know, typically the pain points on job sites. You know people are getting stuff in their eyes and they're getting hurt.
Before, I never had any gloves in my past life which impact protection where gloves have special rubber padding built into the back of hands. You can think of guys having to do a maintenance task on a piece of equipment and it's a tight quarters and you know they're in there with their hand tools and something slips, something breaks, and then they're really pushing and their hand is now travelling into a sharp corner or a blade and and stuff like that.
The demand for that kind of stuff is definitely increased. I've again.
Speaking from my own past life, I've never seen back a hand impact protection gloves and my former roles, but now it's again very much a stock and standard item for a lot of folks. These gloves you know, it's it's never nothing's ever proof, you know, like there's no such thing as something I'm you're you're you know chainmail plate armour or whatever you want to think or call but.
You know it's it's resistant and it and it can lessen, you know, 20 stitches to a back of a hand to to maybe a slight laceration and stuff like that. And then ultimately that's that's the goal is to keep our workforce safe and and to go home. And if the PPE can lessen a potential injury that that's what it's all about. So it's it's neat too as well-being a distributor. So I I I have the advantage of talking to them, the multiple manufacturers and and.
Go over with their reps at their product lines and what they bring out to be new and innovative and you know so.
A few years back, I think cut protection was only up to a Level 5 and now it has an A9 rating is the highest cut rating you'll find in a glove, which basically allows someone to take the equivalent of 15 lbs of force with a straight razor blade on the back of their hand. Without it kind of blowing through the glove, which again like I mentioned before it it that would lessen obviously any potential injury.
Is the goal.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   21:32
What do you have in the area of hard hats and safety footwear?
To offer protection.

Hickey, Josh   21:39
Yeah, well, there's some some good change coming into Brunswick. We know that we're gonna be moving the same as Nova Scotia and other parts of the country to a Type 2 being a lateral side impact.
And I know chin straps and hard. Has that already have chin straps included or or something that's kind of really taken over a lot of conversations, you know, you think about. OK, we're Downing fall Rs but.
What happens if a guy takes a fall and then the hard hat goes flying, you know, and then hits somebody else? Stuff like that, guys working at heights, falling off, keeping it on him.
Footwear, you know steel toe was steel toes, you just had to have your green triangle CSA approved work boot where now there's safety sneakers and you know we have composite products that are as strong as steel and you have your bottom of your foot, your insole protected by a Shank.
You know your full coverage protection.
Safety toe caps.
It's again every different manufacturer supplier has their own spin on that.
The materials are oil water resistance. I seen a neat product the other day. I I always used to get quite upset. I I I burnt up a lot of boot laces. Obviously as a welder to slag in that application and one company has basically a very fine steel aircraft cable with a coating on it that you can, you know, change at your lace for this. And it has a ratcheting.
System to kind of tighten it, you know, so hopefully you're not burning through that stuff and that's just a a new innovation that I've seen actually a few weeks ago, which is pretty neat.
But.
Yeah, the.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   23:32
Chin strapped. Let's go back to that. Let's go back to that first. And what? What do you hear in? Are are you getting or is there any kind of buy in out there when it comes to chin straps? I mean I the whole concept of of hard hats is great but we as as you mentioned and we all know what happens if you do fall.

Hickey, Josh   23:33
The safety chin straps, yeah.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   23:51
Depending on how they're being worn and everything else, they're gonna move, they're gonna possibly fall off. So you really aren't gonna get any kind of protection. Chin straps.
In a way, in an ideal world would be ideal for everyone to wear, but as we know, there's people that will say I know I don't want to.

Hickey, Josh   24:08
Yeah, you don't wanna.
I feel like I'm kinda coming a little bit from the old school.
It's it's a culture change. It's it's, it's a, it's a mentality that we're we're trying to again educate the workforce on why these things are happening and why it's gonna turn into a new standard and it's ultimately for everyone's protection, right. Again, it's very much a catch up game on on that respect or there's not really a whole lot out there for options, for people like myself to carry yourself.
Uh, stuff like that, to have the proper CSA rating and something that already has a chain strap built into it. We we carry and sell a product through PIP Canada, a rocky style rescue. Rocky is the name climbing hard hat. It has no brim, but it has a very nice suspension system where through the shell it has the chain strap built into it and it's just a that's it. That's the standard option.
And you have it included. I've seen now more of my customers.
Slowly kind of moving and adopting that and it's really nice to kinda see, you know, the management at these sites really bringing the workforce to have a chat, not just try to drive it down the workforce's throat. Nobody really likes just being told that that is it, you know, and here it is.
Working with the workforce, educating them, bringing them into the conversation and and you know, OK, we're not doing plant wide, but we're going to have the electricians.
You know, sample this or gonna deck it to six or seven gentlemen or ladies doing that role on a site and you know and then you kinda get the snowball rolling down the hill and and you know as people get to wear some stuff and get used to it. Yes, it's a bit of adjustment and you know some guys find it cumbersome or they don't like that feel but it's just it's like everything you did bit of time and you don't practise or wearing it that you get used to it and that you know it just becomes the new standard.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   26:09
Are there any items that you're seeing a demand for that you're having a hard time to find equipment or solutions for?

Hickey, Josh   26:18
Yeah, it goes right back in hand in hand with, you know, the very big to the very small or the the bane of my existence. It's it's some gentlemen are are so big that it's hard to find a hard hat for them. You know what I mean.
Certain manufacturers.
Very differently on if a hard hat is more egg shaped, you know as opposed to a perfect circle, the depth and that suspension of where it sits into the shell.
Same thing when it comes to the gloves, certain makes and models only go, you know, so big or so small.
We're carrying size 5 like a a double extra small to a 3XL and some of our glove lines that we carry at Chandler.
But even still, I find sometimes I can't. My smallest glove is still not fitting. Some of the folks there's.
AI can't PP is a tricky 1 because we are all so different from male to female from me to you to anybody you know, we're all built differently.
It's still a catch up game to be honest.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   27:28
Yeah, I had a young man that approached me one day at a workshop and he was having an hard time getting safety boots and I forget the exact size. Something like 1617 size 17 workbook and he said I can't find them.

Hickey, Josh   27:43
Yeah. Yeah. And even some bigger gentleman go back to the fall arrest. I know we reached out and and me and my support team really looked around and struggled to find something for a bigger gentleman and.
Even found a company down in Texas. You know, it was, you know, I forget to name it a company, but it was basically, you know, everything's bigger in Texas, right? So but even them at their biggest harness, I I didn't.
Meet the requirement for the height and weight of this gentleman.
And again it's it's it. It gets tricky because you wanna help you wanna produce and get something to that person so they can enter the workforce to go make their money for their family.
But again, sometimes there it's it's not, it's not in existence yet as somebody that hasn't made it that big, or that small, or has figured that out.
But I'm happy to say it's it's not something I come across a whole lot, but it it still happens.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   28:45
So as you meet with the different sales reps and and become aware of new products, new technologies and so on.
What are you seeing as far as the trends in PPE?

Hickey, Josh   28:58
Like like I mentioned, the impact pad back of hand protection impact protection, that's something that wasn't really on my radar when I first joined Chandler here a few years ago. But now it's it's kind of standard practise and and and again I I I applaud the upper management, I've been involved with some hand safety or glove audits. It's really neat that we come into a group and we're walking around with the mill manager, whoever it may be and.
Basically, take some time to walk through a site.
And and discuss what's the the highs and the lows of the the current PPE in use and and then you don't work with.
Whichever distributor at the time to try to find that new solution or bring in some products to trial, but it's.
You got to go through.
Some of the weeds to find the flower that works on that site. You know what I mean? So it's it's sometimes it turns into a bit of a long process because you're some some spots have a very specific task at hand. And then it's like I say, it's just very hard to find that proper fit for that task.
Ask.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   30:12
One area I guess we didn't talk about and that is hearing conservation.
What do you have available to offer to clients when it comes to hearing conservation?

Hickey, Josh   30:22
Yeah, hearing protection.
Well, our classic, you know, disposable earplugs, you know.
Companies are coming out now with some equipment we just trialled some from three M.
A little speaker box and a software system that the disposable ear plug has a little wire hook up built into it that you know if we split some safety glasses we can kind of clip on.
Your the arms of your glasses to hold and it plugs into the actual plug and the speaker will blow a bunch of high decibel sound at the person and it'll give a live readout on.
Your left ear or your right ear and again it goes back to the employee education. A lot of people are wearing those ear plugs, but if you glance down and it looks like it's almost gonna fall out of their ear, you know a lot of people aren't wearing them correctly. So going through a site with this equipment and kind of getting everybody to understand that, you know, you got to reach behind your head with your opposite arm and pull your ear back and make sure you open up that ear canal to kind of really.
Stick that ear plug in there to get the proper hearing protection and then when you get into some areas obviously where the decimal rating is is over 100.
A lot of sites and people are looking for double your protection, so typically they're wearing a plug and then obviously our hard hats in UCU, you have a cat mounted.
Ear **** system that would go over that as well if they need to double protection and then also I know tap into the other division of Chandler a lot of chatter about. OK, that's great. We got hearing protection but I need to talk to you Pearly. On the other side of this machine and you know me and you I haven't got our certificate in lip reading so.
We can't communicate, so now we're having earmuffs come into play that have built in radios. You know what I mean? It's drowning out all of that heavy machinery noise around us, but at least you can click into your radio and I can hear you. That's something that's becoming more into play.
Different types of earplugs allow.
Me to hear you but drown out a lot of the ambient noise. You know, we're talking stuff with radio and Bluetooth in it now.
But then they they also get sticky because in some spots you know it'll allow earbuds or people to listen to their their music per say. And that potentially opens up the door for other hazards. They're they're not focused, stuff like that, but.
And also another neat one I guess, and talked about earplugs.
Pip Canada's got a product that's a bio base. It's it's a plant based.
Material that is made out of made out of and you know it's the bane of some sites come to spring of the year and if you have an outside workforce, guys are done and it is shift and they're taking earplugs out and typically they're not hitting a garbage can and during the snow banks and you get a sea of yellow dots, right, a parking lot or a spot like that. This new product line coming out now being a biobased is biodegradable.
Once it's crushed and comes into a contact with an organic, the majority of that product will break down, so you know being environmentally friendly and and thinking about stuff like that is pretty neat to see.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   33:42
Do you have any area of respirators? What do you see in there for changes?

Hickey, Josh   33:47
You know, as a, as a welder, the welding trade as a whole, sometimes it's to get the guys to wear, you know, your classic half mask respirator, full face respirators. But one when it comes to respiratory protection, I really like seeing is the new innovations coming in for PA PRS, these systems where you have.
A be it a belt on your hip or a backpack system carrying a special piece of equipment that's pulling air in from the atmosphere, and depending on the philtres it's it's cleaning it, pumping it through a hose from that to the back of my heart had her helmet and then it's it floods over to your head and down through your face to keep clean air washing over the welder.
Some of them have hoods built into them to kinda really keep.
That contaminant, a welding smoke typically is, is rolling up, hitting your chis chest and under your chin, and it's it's in your face and that. But and it's it's come more pronounced with these papers because I feel like with the change in the workforce.
Some job sites are trying to be a bit more lenient and and work with the workforce, be it whatever reasoning that some guys want to keep their beards and stuff like that. I remember going on job sites before and being hand a shaving cream and raids or if I had a bit of stubble because it was just a complete no, no, you're not getting on this job site with you know.
Us worried about the fit of your respiratory protection on your face, so I know that that's something that's it's been talked about quite frequently and and honestly.
More and more people are requesting this type of equipment because again.
Be it's why, or whatever we we need everybody working. So if you you need to keep your beard beard and we want to keep you working, then we're going to try to work with that. So these papers are are something that's really starting to kind of take off in the market and more people are going into that.
Look in the keeper employees, healthier guys having to jump inside of, you know, think of a a big tanker hauling oils and fuels and across the road and obviously guys gotta do repairs and maintenance on stuff like that. It's it's hard sometimes to flush air through a system and and to keep it all clean, but if we could throw a PAPR on them and then we don't got to worry about them as much and and keep them safe.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   36:17
Cast off. You know I I've listened to you today and you talk about the challenges of organisations to to keep workers. Yet there's a challenge to also work safely.
That seems to probably be presenting a a really good challenge for workplaces these days, and in the meet the two to to be able to keep your workers yet keep them safe, yet provide the right kind of PPE that's going to allow you to achieve both goals.

Hickey, Josh   36:48
Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's funny and fun sometimes when I walk into a spot, and I obviously, I sell myself as the guy who used to be on the tools on your job site. I've I've been a contractor. I've worked in a lot of the spots I currently sell to now, and I sometimes get job offers and he wanted to bring me in for the tools and the trades out of it, but.
There's there's such a shortage of trades folks now and you know, I'm in Southern New Brunswick. There's a lot of construction. I was in Moncton most this week to to, to look at the the amount of cranes in the area. You know, it's a good sign for construction in an industry and you know that requires our men and women working.
Like I said, it would be a different religious beliefs or whatever the case might be, or your size.
I'm really.
Been pumped and excited to meet the management of these different spots and how much?
Thought and energy is going into what do we need for Johnny or Susie on a site and and what what? What's best for them? What keeps them safe? What keeps them going, you know, because.
Everybody wants to come in and do a good job and and to punch their day and and to walk home in that same or better conditioned. India came in, you know it's it's about getting a job done and going home safe to our families.
And that's where like I mentioned before, like some of these hand safety and glove on it. So I've done a lot of these now.
And it's great to to go back to a site in a year and then learn that they just spent a whole year without any hand injury. And I don't know if it has anything to do with the actual new PPE we brought in. We're just going through that practise of showing the employees that you know you get to say you get some control over what goes on on your site. It's it's not just the way it is. Like let's let's talk, let's figure it out.
The inclusiveness from management to the people on the floor is is something I've been really impressed since I came aboard to Chandler and and talking to my customer group and like, like you said, that we want to keep them going, keep them working and keep them safe. And it's very much a team effort and that's been really great to see.

Perley Brewer (Guest)   39:01
Well, look, Josh, I'd like to thank you very much for joining us on today's podcast.
Very interesting to get an update on what's going on with BPE. Thank you very much and for folks that are listening to our podcast, as always, we'd love to hear any ideas you have relative to future topics or speakers on Air podcast. Stay safe. We'll see you next week.

Hickey, Josh   39:24
Thanks, Perley.