Safety goggles, hardhats, and you guessed it – safety footwear are all examples of materials that may be used as PPE (personal protective equipment) in the trades. As a mechanical engineering intern and student, Mikayla had her own experience with PPE, let’s learn about what safety measures and protocols are taken in the industry:
Personal Safety on the Job
While in my first engineering classes, we learned a few safety protocols for 
when we are working with machinery, harmful chemicals, or near dangerous equipment.
Personal Safety Standards Include:
- Wearing long hair up in a bun to prevent it from getting caught in machinery or dipped in harmful chemicals,
- Wearing closed-toe or steel-toed boots while on a machine shop floor,
- Always wear safety glasses when on the shop floor
- Wearing long work pants
- Wearing a safety vest.
In my intro to machining class, I was the only female so I was the only one that needed to follow the safety protocol for putting my hair up and out of the way. The risk with having your hair down can be that it gets caught in spinning machinery, it can be dipped into contaminants, and it can get in the way of a part you are examining. At Volvo Trucks, we are required to wear safety glasses and steel-toed boots whenever we enter the machine shop or truck garage. This is because it is a liability if heavy machinery were to land on our toes, and if harmful chemicals or metal chips fly into our face. Safety is incredibly important for work productivity, without these protocols, people can get hurt and not be able to work.
Follow along with Mikayla’s progress here.
Learn more about the Generation T movement here.
