Tool Tuesday - PPE Deep Dive on Boots
It’s Tuesday, and time for another look at the Tools Red Mountain Rigging uses to get the job done!
Today we’ll be starting a deep dive into the Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE, our crews rely on to stay safe on the job! We’ll be starting at the bottom with boots!
A good pair of footwear can make all the difference when you’re on your feet all day. But there’s more than just comfort our team looks at when making their boot selection. Being a workplace setting, protective toes and shanks are a must! This means you’re looking for the little green CSA triangle affixed to the boot to know they are built to protect your feet.
Protective toes help save crush injuries from rolling logs, protecting the toes from the blunt forces that can be experienced on the job site.
There’s a number of materials used for protective toe caps built in to boots, but to boil it down to two primary styles we have ‘steel toes’ and ‘composite toes’. Composite toe boots, while lighter, don’t offer the same protection in the arborist world as a true steel toe. While our crews are trained and certified in efficient and safe cutting techniques, should the event occur when a running chainsaw makes contact with a protective toe cap in a boot, composite material will cut through with about the same resistance as wood. Steel does far better at stopping a chain from penetrating through to the toes below!
The next feature to review is the boots shank. The shank is important to protect from penetration from below when walking around the site, but doesn’t tend to find itself in the path of a chainsaw. As such, a lighter composite material may be used my some manufacturers to helps make the boot more comfortable for wearing all day. Composite can tend to offer a bit more flex than a steel shank, which can become an important consideration if you find yourself working in a tree on climbing spurs all day.
Shank length is also an important when it comes to boot choice. If you find yourself standing on a thin piece of metal isolated within the arch of your foot all day, as our crews often do when climbing with spurs, a full-length shank helps disperse that load across the entire bottom of the foot. The rigidity added allows a far more comfortable work experience and increased efficiency when on spurs. Boots with shorter and more flexible shanks become the preferred boot when working from ropes and limb walking, such as for pruning jobs where we aren’t utilizing our spurs.
And speaking of comfort, take in to consideration the boots ability to breath and keep your feet dry. A good waterproof and breathable liner such as GoreTex and become a hugely important addition to footwear when you find yourself working on rainy days or in hot conditions!
The final consideration is additional cut resistance. As we’ll introduce next week when we look at chainsaw pants and chaps, boots with protective aramid layers can be purchased that help stop a chainsaw quickly if it makes contact and cuts through the outer leather of the boot. We’ll explain a bit more on how that process works next week!
Ultimately, the boots our crews choose offer them the absolute best combination of safety and performance when on the job!
Written by Sean Sterna - The Rocky Mountain Arborist & Used with Permission
