VIDEO: TOOLING UP – Finding The Right PPE with the DuPont SafeSPEC™ Online Selector Tool

Narrator: Welcome to Tooling Up, a series by MSC Industrial Supply Company that provides real-world insights brought to you by leading industry experts and aimed at improving the efficiency and productivity of your operations.

Eddie: Hey everybody, this is Eddie with MSC and welcome to this episode of MSC's Tooling Up featuring DuPont. Today we're going to talk about how we can use DuPont's expertise as well as technology to keep you and your team safe. And here to tell us everything that we need to know about all the topics we're going to be hitting upon today is our good friend from the team at DuPont, Daniel. Let's bring him on in. Hey Daniel, thank you so much for joining us on today's episode. Before we get started, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do for the team at DuPont.

Daniel: Sure thing, thank you Eddie. I'm Daniel Hammel. I'm the North America Marketing Lead for Tyvek® and Tychem® Protective Apparel with a special focus on chemical and clean room applications. I'm a qualified safety sales professional and I'm OSHA 30 certified.

Eddie: Well wonderful. Well thank you so much for joining us for today's episode. So, let's jump right in. So in the workplace Daniel, we understand that there's truly a problem when it comes to the lack of PPE preparedness as well as awareness. What are your thoughts on that?

Daniel: Yes, so there's a lot of different scenarios that might be happening. You might have a safety manager or a safety specifier that's new to their role. They might have just completed a job hazard risk assessment and they need to make sure that their protective apparel ensemble is appropriate to keep their workers safe. Similarly, there might be a company that's doing a brand new process that they're not familiar with or they're working with a hazardous chemical that they've never worked with before. Other situations might be first responders where maybe they're out in the field and they see a liquid chemical spill on the ground. First they have to figure out what it is and then they have to figure out if they have the appropriate protective apparel in their arsenal to provide protection against that chemical.

Eddie: No these all truly make sense and so Daniel tell me this, are there any costs associated with being unprepared and unaware?

Daniel: Sure, the first and foremost, the top concern is worker safety. So an injury to a worker is obviously, can be very painful, it can be very inconvenient to their lives, it could even be fatal. It really potentially could diminish their quality of life, so first and foremost that is the most important consideration, keeping workers safe, healthy and happy. Secondly, injuries can be very expensive. I actually took a look at the Better MRO injury cost calculator and I just ran a scenario in there where it was a moderately inexpensive injury. Let's say it was dermatitis caused by a chemical exposure and I chose a $10,000 direct medical expense. Now for this company, let's say they have a relatively high margin of 35 percent, so that initial $10,000 direct cost you're basically going to double it to get to the direct total cost and that's due to indirect costs and that could be because of wages, administrative costs, potential property damage, even losses and productivity. So we're roughly at $20,000 in total cost. Now that company that has that pretty good margin of 35 percent, they're going to need $60,000 in additional sales just to recoup that initial expense. Now if that medical expense goes up higher, which we all know it likely can and might and if that margin is lower than 35 percent, that number's just gonna get higher and higher but even at that relatively low medical expense and good margin, we're still talking six times the initial direct medical cost.

Eddie: Wow, that's definitely enough to get the attention of any shop or facility owner. And so additionally, now that we've identified the problem what type of solutions do you have to combat these issues Daniel?

Daniel: Yeah, DuPont offers SafeSPEC™ and that is our digital platform for our online product catalog for Tyvek, Tychem, Kevlar and Nomex products, but it also houses our online selector tools and why that's helpful is it allows end users to actually put in their chemical hazards and answer a few other questions and once they've done that they can find all of the protective apparel solutions that we offer that provide chemical protection against their hazards.

Eddie: And one thing that we've noticed when it comes to true preparedness in the PPE world is the concept of right sizing. Daniel, what does that mean and why is it so important?

Daniel: Yeah, right sizing is very important. Obviously, we already talked about making sure that the protective apparel solution that the worker is provided is adequate for that hazard, but we also want to make sure that it's not severely overqualified. I've often heard in certain industries, maybe certain companies, if they have a hazardous chemical that they're dealing with they go right to a fully encapsulated level A suit. Level A all the way. Now while that level A suit more than likely is going to provide protection, adequate protection against any chemical hazard, that they're probably dealing with it's going to be severely overqualified for some certain chemicals. So it's possible that a level B, maybe a level C chemical protective suit might provide sufficient protection against the hazard at hand. So you want to make sure that you are providing a protective apparel solution that is going to protect the worker, but you want to make sure that it's the right solution and not severely overqualified because that could lead to discomfort of the worker, that could lead to loss of productivity. Obviously no one wants to be uncomfortable while they're working but it's also a cost saver for companies. A fully encapsulated level A suit is going to be a lot more expensive than a level B or a level C chemical protective suit.

Eddie: These are great points and absolutely makes sense. So when we're talking about SafeSPEC™ it sounds like an amazing tool but Daniel, how easy is it to use?

Daniel: It's very easy to use and I think we have a demo that we can walk through. So once you get to the online selector tool you can start searching for your chemical hazards and as you type in you'll notice that you'll have some pre-populated things pop up. So I’m searching for sulfuric acid. There's various concentration levels that we can choose and that's because we've tested those fabrics against various concentrations. I'll choose greater than 95 for this example. I'll add it to the list and I see my CAS number, I can delete it if I want to. At this point I can add up to five chemical hazards, but for this scenario we're just going to use one. So I'll click on view permeation data I’ll get a little pop-up just reminding me that there are multiple concentration levels to consider. I can choose click to proceed to get to the next page. Now here's where I’ll find some permeation results for the fabrics that we've tested against sulfuric acid at greater than 95 percent. And that column to the right there that's going to be the amount of time that you'll have protection with that fabric against that chemical hazard. If you see greater than 480, that's 480 minutes in an eight-hour work shift. If you see some other number, that means that's the length of time in minutes that you'll have perfect protection against that chemical. If you see an imm, that means that there is an immediate breakthrough and that particular fabric is not appropriate for that hazard, but we'll let you know that if we tested it and it's an immediate breakthrough, don't use that product find a higher, more protective solution.

So we have to answer a few more questions. Do you require flame-resistant clothing? Let's say no. How much of the material is expected to contact the garment? Let's go with moderate. We'll say it's a spray or a splash as far as the intensity. Let's do a one-hour potential exposure and I'm going to say that the exposure is direct to the torso for this example and we do not need bloodborne pathogen protection today, so we'll say no. Once I've answered all the questions, I choose view matching products and there you go. Those are the protective apparel options that provide protection against sulfuric acid at 95 concentration for at least one hour. It's as easy as that.

Eddie: No, very easy and very impressive especially with the wealth of information that you have within your database. So outside of the wealth of information and technology that you bring, what type of support are you providing to your customers around the globe?

Daniel: Yeah, so in North America alone across the U.S. and Canada we have an extensive field sales team as well as technical specialists and a team of certified industrial hygienists. All of them are there to help answer your questions, provide guidance on protective apparel, maybe do an on-site visit to make sure that you know everyone's being kept safe at your facility. We also offer a job hazard risk assessment where one member of our CIH team will actually go to your site. They'll look at the various applications at your site where there might be some hazards, they'll talk to safety managers, they'll talk to some of the workers and they'll do a full job hazard risk assessment. Once they've finished the assessment, you'll get a report with all of the protective apparel and PPE recommendations that they have based on the various applications at your site.

Eddie: This is a wonderful additional layer of support that you're bringing to the market. So, today Daniel we've not only identified the problem, we've talked about the SafeSPEC™ solution as well as all the support that you're providing to everyone you're working with worldwide. So, as we wrap up our episode today, why don't you give us a quick recap.

Daniel: Sure. So SafeSPEC™ is a free tool, it's a global tool. We actually have 16 different versions of it across the world for different regions and countries and nine different languages. SafeSPEC™ houses our online product catalog so you can look at Tyvek® solutions, Tychem®, Kevlar, Nomex. You can use our online selector tools if you know exactly what your hazards are. It also houses our resource center and this is an online library of all of our documents including technical data sheets, industry overview sheets, downloadable PDF catalogs so really there's a wealth of information there as well. So I encourage people that are interested to check out the site, maybe use the online selector tool, put in a couple example scenarios, look at the catalog, just look around the site and explore.

Eddie: Wonderful, and for those who are looking for more on either SafeSPEC™ or all the other amazing things that you're doing in the market, where can we get that information?

Daniel: Folks can visit the DuPont SafeSPEC™’s site at safespec.dupont.com and if they want to learn more about DuPont products and solutions they can go to mscdirect.com\dupont.

Eddie: Wonderful. Well thank you for all your passion and insight on today's episode of MSC’s Tooling Up featuring DuPont.

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