SAFETY SPEAK


Safety Watch: Personal Hygiene


By Jill Odom


JUNE MARKS NATIONAL SAFETY MONTH AND WHILE THE landscaping profession deals with a number of occupational hazards, one that can be easily overlooked is personal hygiene. Yet COVID-19 has brought hand- washing and general personal hygiene for the forefront of people’s minds. Whether the pandemic is still ongoing or under control by the time you read this article in the magazine does not change the fact that hygiene is important to maintain a healthy workforce. “Obviously poor hygiene practices risk the spread of COVID-19 to fellow workers and crew members, not to mention the distinct possibility of carrying dirt, grime, residues, and germs home to family members,” says Sam Steel, safety advisor for the National Association of Landscape Professionals.


Not only does good hygiene keep workers and the public healthy, it can also help prevent dermatitis and other skin-related conditions that may be caused by work activities.


Use hot


How to


wash your hands the proper way


water


HANDWASHING DONE RIGHT Handwashing is one of the commonly cited precautions anyone can take to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and is a key pillar of personal hygiene. This is because people frequently touch


Wash for at least 20 seconds


Scrub under


fingernails too!


Turn off the faucet with a towel


“General cleanliness in a workplace helps promote other safety behavior, and clean facilities are more likely to be used than dirty facilities,” says Marissa Baker, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the University of Washington’s Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences and program director of indus- trial hygiene. “An individual’s cleanliness at work affects others, too, including co-workers and the public, so if there isn’t good hygiene it may not make a very good impression to potential clients or employees.”


their faces and it is an easy way for disease to spread. Proper handwashing ensures that if someone touches their face, they are at least doing so with a hand clean of bacteria or viruses. Not only that, but handwashing also helps keep members of the public safe by not spreading a disease when shaking hands or infecting a surface someone else might touch. You may think even a child knows to wash their hands, but Baker says proper handwashing isn’t necessarily as simple as people think. “When you are doing a textbook handwash, you have to wait for the water to get hot, scrub for at least 20 seconds with soap, including between all fingers and even under fingernails,” she says. “You also need to ensure that you don’t turn the faucet off with your clean hands or open the door with clean hands, which could then negate the good washing you just did.”


Baker adds that because handwash- ing is such a routine part of life it can be hard to convince yourself to wash your hands when they aren’t dirty visually. “We all assume we are doing it adequately, so it can be hard to convince people they need to change their habit, or do it more frequently,” Baker says.


HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU WASH YOUR HANDS?


Wash your hands often


30 The Landscape Professional //May/June 2020


Speaking of frequency, Baker says that in a perfect world, everyone should wash their hands before and after consuming food, after using the toilet, after blowing their nose, coughing, or sneezing into their hand, after touching garbage or an animal, after coming in from outside or another location, and after shaking someone’s hand or holding their hand. “For landscape professionals, ideally they should also be washing their hands after they remove gloves, since anything that is on the glove could be transferred to the hand removing the glove, and if they are sharing tools/equipment without gloves on, should be mindful of a few


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