The Heat Dome is Over Us! It Is Miserable! Come on Cool Down!

EPISODE 16 PODCAST OUTLINE

Welcome!

Thanks to our sponsor Formetco! As well as other fans of the show!  Still growing in popularity!

Thanks to my remote engineer Chuck

Online classroom for climber certification currently available

                OSHA 10 and 30hr classes

                Qualified Climber Classroom

Creating an Online Classroom – The Billboard Safety Guy Academy

Live training in the works for February 2027

Deep Thoughts

1. If a turtle loses its shell, is it homeless or naked? 
2. Why do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway? 
3. If nothing sticks to Teflon, how do they get the Teflon to stick to the pan? 
4. Why is the word "phonetic" not spelled the way it sounds? 
5. If a fly loses its wings, is it called a walk? 
6. Why isn't "palindrome" a palindrome? 
7. Why do we call them apartments when they're all stuck together? 
8. If you try to fail and succeed, which one did you do? 
9. Why do they call it rush hour when nobody's moving? 
10. If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

-and a couple that are safety related

                If common sense is so common, why do we spend so much time teaching it? 

If safety is everyone's job, why does OSHA keep calling the safety manager?

Mail and Comments thebillboardsafetyguy@gmail.com

Announcements and In the News

NYC mayor signs Executive Order on protecting workers from heat - Safety+Health Magazine

                Heat Stress a Major Topic in Both Workplace as Well as at Home

OSHA ends all remaining COVID-19 enforcement - Safety+Health Magazine

Cellphone use behind the wheel_ myths and truths - Safety+Health Magazine

Democrat leaders seek withdrawal of DOL’s proposed ‘joint employer’ changes - Safety+Health Magazine

Beware the ‘shiny object’ when choosing safety tech, NSC experts say - Safety+Health Magazine

BSG Opinion

Am I Really My Brother’s Keeper When It Comes to Safety?  

“This is Jim Poage, the Billboard Safety Guy, reminding you that you don’t have to change the whole world. Just make your part of it a little safer. Until next time, be safe”

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Welcome. Welcome back, everyone. Welcome to episode 16 of the Billboard Safety Guy. I am honored and pleased to be uh presenting this many since last uh November, since we got started. So I uh want to applaud everyone for uh being there and helping make this everything that it has become. We'll do this right here. Yes, thank you, thank you, thank you. Playing with the buttons again, you can tell. Um I definitely want to start out uh by saying thanks to our sponsor for MetCole. Everything billboard, anything you can think of that you would need for out-of-home advertising, they either have it or have a resource for it. So I would suggest giving them a call if you're in the business or looking at getting into it. They do everything from foundations and installs and fabrication up to the complete digital package. So anything you need, they're there and available to help out. Um, I'd like to also thank all of our other fans that are out there. We keep gaining more and more, which is a great thing. All the friends and family that are listening in, it still seems to be growing in popularity. I've got people outside the country that are sending me notes saying how much they enjoy it, and they're showing up on some of our uh statistics that I get back from uh Buzz Sprout. So thank you all. And as always, thanks to my remote engineer Chuck. As I mentioned last time, he's got a couple of different projects going on with Learn a Note to learn how to play the piano keyboard. And another one that's a fish game that he is putting out soon. It I think it's currently available in the Apple store, but it should be soon available as Android also. So if you're looking for something a little different, be sure and check out his apps that he's releasing. Uh, let's see. Online classrooms are available for climber certification currently, and I do have the capability of doing online OSHA 10 and 30-hour classes. I'm not a fan of them. It's called Vilt. Uh it's a virtual live training. That's where the VLT comes from, that is allowed to be done online. But you have certain criteria on the number of people that can attend and being able to observe them live during the entire class to ensure that they're there and answer any questions they have live. So if you're interested in that, let me know. But it's one of those things I'm not a fan of doing. I think that the in-person classes are far better than what the Vilt are as far as getting information across and having interaction and chats with the people that are in the classroom. Um, I do have a bit of news. I have been uh working with trying to figure out the best way to put into a written format a safety book for the billboard industry. And as much as I have used AI, which I know last time I was kind of down on an AI when I brought it up, and a number of other tricks to try and make it fit, it just didn't seem to go well together. So, what I've come up with is I've found a hosting platform, and I'm looking at creating the Billboard Safety Guy Academy, an online academy you could go to to get on-demand training for safety in the billboard industry. And that is going to include a climber class and some of the individual topics such as electrical safety and things that are in demand whenever I go out and do classes. So there's uh something that I'm putting in the works that I'm hoping to have done before the end of the year, but I will keep you posted on it. And we're still doing some planning for the live training that's going to be done in Duluth, Georgia in February. I'm shooting for the week of February 8th. I always like to get the week before Valentine's Day. It seems like timing-wise and weather-wise, it works out best for everyone to do it right around that period. So keep listening in and checking the Fermetco webpage since they will be hosting it. It will be listed under the hardware tab, and you'll see the safety class listed on there that you can go and get more information on and sign up for it when it becomes live. Um, I did have a few people question me about the last uh podcast that I did that included the interview with Chris Zukin from Meadow Outdoor. And they said, hey, this is all great and everything, but you didn't give us any historical topics, you didn't give us any jokes, you didn't give us any deep thoughts. So to keep people from being disappointed, I have gone back to my files and pulled out some of the list of things that I think about frequently, and I thought I would give you a few of them here. Let's see, I got 10 and a couple of bonuses that I'll touch on. Uh deep thoughts, things I think about. Um if a turtle loses its shell, is it homeless or is it naked? Uh why do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway? Never made much sense to me. Uh, if nothing sticks to Teflon, how do they get the Teflon to stick to the pan? I'm sure there's a chemist out there that can explain the the reaction process and the uh coating, but that's something that seems kind of peculiar. Uh this one has really been one that I've wondered about since I was a kid. Why is the word phonetic not spelled the way it sounds? You know, you would think they would make that a requirement. Uh, if a fly loses its wings, is it called a walk? Don't know about that. Uh why is a palindrome a palindrome? Spelled the same way forwards and back. It just uh doesn't seem to make sense either. Uh why do we call them apartments when they're all stuck together? Think about that one. Apartments instead of togetherments. Okay, moving on. Uh if you try to fail and succeed, which one did you do? That's something to consider. Um why do they call it rush hour when no one's moving? It's like the opposite of rush hour. Um if a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? I I hope it's not that connection like that. Um and here's a couple that are safety related. If common sense is so common, why do we spend so much time teaching it? And that's very true because I've had people use that as an excuse for things in the past. I had a gentleman that worked for us uh at one of the companies I was at, and he sent me a picture of him supposedly explaining a situation, but actually doing a situation where he somewhat endangered himself trying to illustrate for me what the hazard was. And when I asked him about it, I said, you know, common sense should tell you not to do that. And his response was, Well, common sense just isn't that common. And I thought, you know, you're talking about yourself here. So that's one of those things that's very comical but true. You know, if common sense is so common, why do we spend so much time talking about it or teaching it? Uh, if safety is everyone's job, why does OSHA keep calling the safety manager? That's true. Now, that's the funny side of it, but in reality, defending OSHA a little bit, they will talk to everyone that they can about safety if they come onto a job site and see something being done that's not to par, not something that they think should be done the way that they should do it. They will interrog uh interrogate, that's a horrible word to say. Uh, they will discuss with everyone on the job site the company's position on safety and what preventive actions the company takes to keep their employees safe. So while this is funny, it's also kind of a misnomer. So um mail and comments already kind of addressed some of the comments that I've heard, and we've covered some of that. Let's get into some of the in the news stuff and how it relates to us. Um a few times I've kind of drifted away whenever I was uh going over some of the news stuff, and I've had people ask me before and say, well, how exactly does that apply to the billboard industry or outdoor advertising? And they're right. They're right to call me down on it and make sure that I stay, you know, on the track that this is the billboard safety guy, not the general industry safety guy. So I'm trying to do better at explaining how some of this stuff does relate to what we do in the billboard industry. And starting off today, um, where I live uh here in South Carolina, we are currently under what's called a heat dome. And the heat dome is causing us to have ridiculously high temperatures along with ridiculously high humidity, and those two things together are definitely hazards to people having to work outside. Uh, if you're outside for very long at all, you're going to experience uh heat stress or some type of heat illness. And it's one of those things that while there are requirements now coming out that the employers protect their employees with a heat stress program, this is one of those carryover topics that people at home can also benefit from, that they need to protect themselves when they're outside and they're in a situation where maybe they're working around the house, mowing the lawn, or doing some outdoor repair work, and it's in this vicinity like we are, where it's a hundred degrees and 90% humidity, and it's you know deadly for them to be out there for an excessive period of time without hydrating properly and dressing in a way that's appropriately. So it's one of those things that everybody needs to consider whether they're at work or whether they're at home. And if you get heat sickness at home, it can carry over and have a negative effect on you at the workplace, also. So this is one of those topics that I feel we share with all industries. And there's some things that were in the news regarding it most recently, and all of our uh selection of topics with this podcast are coming from the safety and health magazine that is published by the National Safety Council. And uh we'll we'll talk about this first one. Uh, New York City mayor signs executive order on protecting workers from heat. Um, Mayor Zorhan Zo Zoran, sorry, I my apologies to the mayor, Mon Momdani. My tongue just can't wrap around his name today for some reason, signed off on this executive order that is tasking the Department of Buildings in New York to review and strengthen construction heat safety requirements, and they require plans to be in place by March 1st on how they're going to continue to improve it going forward. And I know he catches a lot of heat for a lot of his uh political work and his personal swayings and stuff, but honestly, I can't say that I disagree with him on this. Uh, they are trying to go out of their way to protect people who work in the outdoor environment and making it to where they don't have to worry about becoming ill or sick because of heat exposure. And he's also pushing for uh heat illness to be listed on their OSHA recordable each year if you have people become sick and unable to work, even for a minor period of time, due to heat exposure. I I want to see the plans before they come out, but this is something that I do agree with. Now, this is uh also coming from someone that was one of the first people, not people, as in me personally, but the first safety person that was called upon by a state plan that had heat exposure requirements, and we had people working who weren't following anything. And when they called me, I argued the point and I said, these guys are changing billboard copy. They pull up in a truck, they get out. Most of the time it's around three o'clock in the morning, three or four, what whatever time the sunlight gets enough that they can see, they go out, they climb these billboards, they change out the copy. It takes under 30 minutes, and they get back in an air-conditioned vehicle and cool off while they fill out their paperwork and then they drive away. And the OSHA entity I was talking with said, sorry, not good enough. If they're up over 15 minutes and it's in excess of 85 degrees and 40% humidity, based on this chart that we have, then you have to take required steps, such as you have to provide them with shade. You have to, meaning like a pop-up tent or an umbrella or something that's on the back of the truck. You have to have water containers, one with water, fresh water, and one with ice and disposable cups, and you have to have more or less a spotter that makes sure that every 15 minutes they come down and they take a five to 10 minute break, or if they feel ill, they come down. And my argument was they have an air-conditioning truck, air-conditioned truck. They could come down, get into the cab of the truck, and cool off at any point that they felt it was necessary. Well, they said, How do you know that the truck's always gonna be running? How do you know it won't die and not start? And how do you and my argument was always, well, how do you know that the wind's not gonna blow your tent away and then you don't have shade anymore? And it's one of those things that I wasn't gonna win the argument because they were trying to make a point, but it was one that I put a lot of thought to afterwards, and I agreed that, hey, this is one of those things that may not be that bad. We might need to really look into this. So, with a lot of the extreme heats that we're seeing, both where I came from in Arizona and here in South Carolina, I am a firm believer that all employees that have em, all employers that have employees that work outdoors need to have a firm, rigid heat exposure program that tells people here's the hazards, here's how you protect from it, and we're going to enforce it. And if we catch you not doing that, it could result in some disciplinary action because it's just not worth somebody getting heat stroke and dying on the job. So, all right, that's enough about heat exposure. Uh, one of the new things that came out also is an announcement that OSHA is ending all remaining COVID-19 enforcement. Now that's good because they were issuing citations to like healthcare facilities and hospitals that were uh not doing some of the recording requirements that they wanted for COVID-19. And now they have said that there's been enough time passed that it's not necessary to do this type of action anymore, and we are not going to treat it any differently than some of the other viruses out there that could hospitalize and kill people that don't have a strong enough immune system. Uh but I looked at this and it was like this is good that we recognize that we probably no longer need to do this. But as a safety person, I think safety people need to take a step back and maybe notate what it is that we did that was right during this. How did we respond to try to protect people? And people can say, oh, it's a natural occurrence, and you know, they shouldn't have to be required to wear a mask and things and social distancing. Well, yeah, that's true. But you know what? When you don't know what it is you're fighting and you're on the front line, the best thing to do is whatever's necessary to try and keep somebody well. So we did go to some extremes possibly, but I still think that there are things we learned about utilizing some of the knowledge that we had in viral control to help protect people from the aerosol type exposures they had. So I don't think this is one of those things where let's beat each other up because politically there are people who say this was orchestrated and you know this was a sham. And maybe it was, but like I said, we were the ones who were fighting the fight. We were trying to keep everybody safe and at work and not exposed. So we did go to some extremes. And I think that we need to remember that, that it wasn't something that was all overreaction, at least on our parts. So enough said about that. Um, when I was recently at Meadow Outdoor, and uh one of the topics that I talked about was driving safety. I touched on it real briefly in the main meeting that I had some time. And lo and behold, Safety and Health magazine had an article that this month that was titled Cell Phone Use Behind the Wheel, Myths and Truths. Now, then National Safety Council has had a robust driving program, safe driver program, for decades. I mean, long before I started doing anything with them. And they don't say anything that they can't back up with facts and studies that they have done. So when they say something is a myth, it is time to kind of listen because they they're not going to get exposure over something like that. So here's a I'm it's a very short article. I'm gonna read you some of the key points to it. Workers are four times more likely to crash when using a cell phone while driving. Period. That's the first line. If you talk and drive. At the same time, your brain can't do either well. For example, it's nearly impossible to read a book and have a phone conversation. While driving, this often results in crashes because of delayed breaking times and a lack of attention to traffic signals. Here are some common beliefs about using cell phones behind the wheel, followed by the facts. All right, number one, drivers can multitask. The truth is the human brain can't do two things at once. Instead, it switches between the two tasks, which slows a driver's reaction time. Number two, the myth. Talking on a cell phone is the same as talking to a passenger. The truth? Adult passengers are copilots. They can help drivers stay alert to prevent crashes. People on the other end of the phone can't see the roads, so they can't do that. All right. Next myth. Hands-free cell phone use is okay. The truth, drivers talking on a cell phone miss up to half of the driving environment, including red lights, stop signs, and pedestrians. Next myth, it's safe to use a cell phone at a stoplight. The truth, even at stoplights, drivers need to remain attentive to all hazards, even when stopped. Texting at a stoplight still causes a driver to be distracted. And from a courteous driver perspective, they should be paying attention so that when the light changes and they can move on, you're not sitting there waiting behind them for them to put their phone down, shift their car into gear, or do whatever they need to do to accelerate forward. But from the safety perspective, where I live, I can't tell you the number of people I have seen that have run a red light, not on yellow, not even close, just flat out running a light that has been red for several seconds. And if you're sitting there doing a text, and let's say somebody behind you honks to make you go because your light has turned green, you're not going to look left and right to make sure it's safe. You're going to hit the gas because you don't want that person behind you to hit their horn again or be the person that is holding up traffic. So when you hit the gas, if that other person is running that red light, you get T-boned. And sure, you're in the right. But as my dad used to say, you can be dead right. So it's one of those things you still need to pay attention, even stopped at a stop line. Myth, voice to text is safe. Truth, a recent AAA study found that a driver can be distracted for up to 27 seconds while sending a voice text. So not exactly correct to think that that is safe. So driving is one of those things that affects all of us, even in the billboard industry. I used to tell people frequently when I would do my presentations that the two main things that our people are exposed to, no matter what their position usually in a billboard company are climbing, which resulted in falls, and driving, which resulted in traffic accidents. And those two are two things that cause more fatalities and more injuries to our people than anything else. So if you can at least minimize one of those, you're you're doing quite well with your safety program. All right. Next article is Democrat leaders seek withdrawal of DOL's proposed joint employer changes. This is one that is it's really sticky. It's hard to excuse me. It's hard to decide what to do here, but there is a problem. And there's a term called uh permatemp, where employees are leased or hired from a company more or less permanently as temporary employees. And there has been some discussion over eliminating this joint employer liability and trying to point to just the company that more or less owns the employee as being responsible if there's an injury or unsafe working unsafely or something like that. Anyway, it it's a very tough area to decide. And some of the Democrats are saying that based on this desire to minimize who's handling it, so to speak, who's responsible for this permitemp, they want it done away with. And they say that the proposal would create confusion in the courts and undermine the DOL's enforcement action, which the Department of Labor is actually over, OSHA, if you weren't aware of that. It could threaten the wages of U.S. workers and it could hurt small businesses operating under the franchise mold of temporary employees. So at some point somebody's gonna have to say who's responsible for the hazard. And whether it is joint, where both parties are or not, it's gonna end up having to be spelled out in contracts, I believe. And I think you will see this something that more and more citations are going to be issued to both the employing and the retaining employers, both the ones that are using the permitemp and the ones that are paying the permit. And if it's an unsafe condition, it there needs to be more or less a job hazard assessment done that would tell OSHA who has the ability to correct the issue. Pardon me. And many people will say it's going to be the owner of the permitemps because they could just say, no, you're not going to go work in that environment. And now you're impacting their wages. They're not, you're not going to allow them to go out and work. Or it could be the exposing employer. So it kind of becomes a multi-employer workplace situation where everybody's responsible. And in the past, that's kind of what OSHA would do. Everybody gets a citation. We're not going to sort it out, but we're going to make sure that everybody knows that this is a problem. And I don't necessarily think that's a bad idea. I think that everyone should share in making sure people are safe. And if it comes down to an unsafe condition, it shouldn't be just on one party or the other. Exposing and owning are two different things. All right, enough of that soapbox. Let's get off of that. All right. Now then, this is one that has come up recently. And the article's very good. Beware the shiny object when choosing safety tech, NSC experts say. And I was asked my thoughts with the intent to get my um approval of what I saw. And it took a very basic piece of safety equipment that all of our outdoor people wear when working at heights and changed it from something you would just put on and you would inspect, put it on, and wear it while working at heights. And that was the basics. And it changed to a device that because they had incorporated a moving part that was not there before, it became something that requires specialized training, an instability in the event of a fall because of movement, and a few other things I didn't like. But because it was touted as the new improved, more or less as this article says, shiny object out there, I had to say I would not advocate this for my people. Now, I say that based on my opinion. So we're going to advocate to have our people use it. Okay, that that's your choice. To me, though, it's like if something requires more training than how to don it and doff it and inspect it and dispose of it, you now have complicated it to the point where a step could be missed and it could become fatal if they were involved in a fall. So before you ever start looking at new tech or new design or anything outside of the basic stuff that has worked for centuries. Wait a minute, decades, not centuries. We'll say decades because I don't think some of the devices have been around that long. Um, you have to do an assessment of the risk. What are you protecting from? What could be the downside of using this equipment? Because I I like to think of our positions in safety as being similar to that of the requirements of a doctor from the standpoint that our first goal is not to introduce something that would cause harm. You know, first rule of the Hippocratic Oath is uh do no harm. You don't want to do anything that's gonna make it more difficult to use. You want it as simple as possible. You want it so simple that a five-year-old could figure it out. And you want to hold people accountable to using it then at that point. So after you do your risk assessment of the equipment and the hazard, you kind of have an idea of where you want to go. Then you can look at some of the tech solutions that are available. And I say weigh these heavily against what's already there because you've got a like a tribal knowledge that people have of how to use what has been in the industry forever. So I think it's good that you think very closely as to whether this is really going to do what you hope it will. And you can do that also as you assess your readiness to make that type of change. And are you ready to discard a number of products that you have to purchase something new because you don't want them being used and intermingled in a way, so to speak. It's best if you can keep a consistency and a uniformness about your program. And then, you know, the safety people will make the business case on it and show, you know, what cost and return is on investment is, and then you do an implementation at that point. But always be somewhat leery of what you see when it comes to the new best and new and improved products out there, because you might find that you're buying something that could complicate it for the end user more so than what needs be. I once again, that's my soapbox on that. All right. That was pretty much what I found in the news for this last period. I do want to talk about something else that is my opinion, the Billboard Safety Guy opinion, that um came up recently in a discussion with a friend of mine that's also heavily into the safety side of billboards. And I I use a term frequently when I talk to groups, and I say, we are our brothers' keepers when we were out there. We owe it to ourselves and to them to make sure they're safe. And I was with a safety person and we were walking, and we walked by a job site, wasn't even a billboard site where a person was doing something unsafe. And I said, Hey, you want to tell them about this? And a joke that a lot of us have is I'm off duty right now. So we said that, and then it made me think, excuse me, um, what message does it send to somebody that you work with if you tell them or you don't tell them to wear their safety equipment, or you don't correct them and say, hey, that's an unsafe condition, you need to do such and such. What you are essentially saying by saying nothing is your life doesn't mean anything to me. Your injury is not something that's my concern. Your family's welfare, if they depend on your income as a livelihood, they don't matter to me either. So we are doing people a disservice by not saying something. If it's somebody in your work group, if it's your crew or even if it's your boss, if somebody comes up and you say, Hey, you need to put on a hard hat, we're in a lift zone, there's a load that's being lifted by this crane, they may give you some static. I mean, somebody can come back and say, Who are you, my mother, you know, or something to that effect. But really, I would say, no, I'm somebody concerned about you and your family. You need to do this to make sure nothing happens to you. And if they're unwilling, then you've done at least your part. You've made them aware of it. But just total silence is like the worst thing you could do. It's like just standing there and watching somebody step off the edge of a cliff when all you had to do was say, hey, look out. So, you know, keep that in mind and think about it whenever uh you see somebody doing something that is inappropriate or not doing it correctly. And it's one of those things that I see it on every job site I go to. I don't want to be the bad guy. I don't want them to think badly of me. I I just started. I want to be the guy they like, you know. Well, they may not like you in that moment, but if they have something you tell them that protects them, like they put on a hard hat and suddenly something gets dropped, a wrench or something from the deck on the board they're working on, and it bounces off. Rather than sending them to the hospital, they just have to get a new hard hat. Well, they'll think twice about what they say to you. So, yes, we are our brothers' keepers out there when it comes to safety. And I say that wholeheartedly. The worst that you can do to somebody is not warn them. So keep that in mind when you go out there. Make it part of your safety talking. Talk to the crew or that you're on, or have if you're a supervisor or manager, talk to the guys out working and say, look, it's not, I'm not telling you to do this stuff to be a jerk. I'm doing this stuff because number one, I care about you. I don't want you to get hurt out here, and I want you to be able to leave the job site in the condition you showed up, in addition to which I'm trying to protect the company as well. So, yeah, I have an interest in you and keeping my job going. So take it for what it's worth. But yeah, definitely think of weaving this into some discussions that you're having because it's very important that we start saying stuff and watching each other, being our own police force, so to speak. And with let's go back to the first topic that we talked about heat stress. Very easy to tell somebody, hey man, you're not looking good. Why don't you go take a break and get some water? I don't want you to get overheated. How am I going to get you down from up here if you black out? I mean, there's a lot of good logistics on what you could share with somebody on that. So definitely, definitely look out for each other out there because it's definitely something that we all need to do and do better at. I'll say that. All right. Well, I'm up against my time. I'm long-winded as usual this time. So I appreciate each and every one of you and all of our listeners. Please, you know, if you think somebody would be interested, share my podcast with them. We'd love to have more people listening in. And until next time, I'm going to say this is Jim Poge, the Billboard Safety Guy, reminding you that you don't have to change the whole world. Just make your part of it a little safer. Until next time, be safe.