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Comment by schneems | Hacker News Reader

The problem with “always wear a p100” is that they’re not comfortable in an unventilated uncooled house which is where a lot of construction happens. If everyone is wearing one you also need to take more breaks which eats into time to do the job.

The industry is set up so you only get paid for doing the job. If doing it unsafely means doing it faster or being more comfortable then a lot of small time contractors will take that short term gain despite the long term risks.

I don’t know how we incentivize doing the right thing more here.

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> The problem with “always wear a p100” is that they’re not comfortable in an unventilated uncooled house which is where a lot of construction happens. If everyone is wearing one you also need to take more breaks which eats into time to do the job.

Also, solutions that require people to consistently do uncomfortable things are not realistic; we know they will fail to comply - just like we would - and they will get sick.

Also, they come up with post-hoc rationalizations that justify them not doing the uncomfortable thing.

The error they make is thinking that only "they" - other people - do these things.

The same people probably work out at the gym ironically! But covid showed that people can wear masks alot.

Lots of people refused and caused lots of deaths.

A paper Covid mask is nowhere near as uncomfortable as a p100!

For comfort you'd probably want to get a positive air pressure mask. Those things are wildly underrated. Can even stick on a volatiles filter when relevant.

Yeah, those helmets that are basically face shields with optional hard hat and neck hood are generally speaking fairly comfortable: wide FOV, zero difficulty breathing, and an entire face shield (not just eye "shield") almost casually integrated. As long as you're working where you dare to go without full-on SCBA, a high-enough-tier variant of the e.g. 3M face shield helmets will suffice.

Bonus points for being able to easily just run an external air hose feed into the helmet when working in environments that don't kill you if you dare to take the helmet off in an emergency.

This is what I wear for carpentry/wood working. It's almost identical to the mask I wore in the military for CBRN just different filters and far lighter. Suggestion to look for masks that have larger outter and inner seals if you have glasses or low cut facial hair/stubble respectively as they'll continue to seal.

I believe 3M makes a mask that pretty much doesn't have a seal at all, instead relying on the positive air pressure to keep crap out. That has always seemed like the best solution comfort-wise to me. Anything that seals to the face will end up sweaty at the seals. Should work with basically any variety of lush woodworking beard too.

You make it illegal to do the wrong thing and have surprise audits. Losing your license is a pretty strong motivator to do it properly.

How do you do a surprise audit in a customers house?

You pass a law giving a class of inspector the right to enter premises where building works appear to be progressing. You strictly limit what they are permitted to observe and record and require recording of reasonable suspicion. Refusal to grant entry is itself an offence.

Approaches like this would work but are also a huge can of worms.

>You pass a law giving a class of inspector the right to enter premises

In most countries (and I'd expect to include Australia), there cannot be a blanket invasion of privacy - and it'd require a court order. The amount of paper would would be ridiculous, then what if I do that on my own, or I used a cousin to do it for me, for free?

Like I said, can of worms. There are no easy solutions.

The customer would be made to sign a contract allowing random state inspection.

> what if I do that on my own, or I used a cousin to do it for me, for free?

You and your cousin could decide to go and mud wrestle crocodiles, but we'd still ban opening an amusement park where that was offered to members of the public.

As the customer of a builder, I would very much approve of someone making sure said builders work wasn't dogshit.

Seriously, who in their right mind is going to deny entry to an auditor making sure that your builder isn't an idiot?

I mean, if we can't incentivize doing the right thing by teaching people that they'll die of a respiratory disease in their 30s if they don't wear their PPE, then honestly, that's life. If people choose to do their job in a way that gives them high risk of bad health outcomes, that's on them.

Certainly if workers are being coerced into not doing the right thing, that's a problem, and employers need to be fined into oblivion if they pull that crap.

If it's uncomfortable or takes longer to do it safely, that cost should be passed on to the person paying for the work.

You implicitly lay responsibility on the worker first, then on the employer, then on the customer.

Perhaps if the order of responsibility were reversed, it would lead to better outcomes.

It would be ridiculous to have any responsibility on the customer.

The only feasible order is government, employer, then worker. The government is tasked with the making the rules and surprise inspections, and the rest follows from there.

Well, the customer also has a lot of power. They can decide to hire a company (if available of course) that encourages/forces their workers to use PPE, even if it's a little more expensive (and maybe also takes longer) instead of just going for the lowest bidder...

How would a customer verify that? They are supposed to also monitor the worksite? And be knowledgeable about consistent work and the type of PPE it requires?

It's not really that hard to understand PPE requirements.

Is it dusty? Wear a mask.

Is it loud? Hearing protection.

And everyone should wear shoes with steel caps.

If you see someone with a bandana over their mouth in sandals you know they are unsafe. They know it too. This is not something that is difficult to understand.

And then what? The customer takes pictures and reports them to the government? Fires them? What if there is a dispute, the laborer takes the customer to court for false claims?

Who polices the customer? The logistics of making everyone a cop make no sense to me.

You are overthinking it.

If you see your contractor not using PPE, you just tell them to put it on. Just like you'd tell him to do it properly if you saw him cutting corners somewhere else.

Contractors want to get paid, so they generally tend to do what the person paying the bill asks them to do.

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