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By Luke Laggis, Editor, Municipal Sewer & Water Magazine Educate yourself and your crews, and take every necessary step to make sure no one becomes a victim. Wastewater work is important. We champion the work you do in every issue of MSW. But no sewer line problem is worth dying over. Accidents happen all the time. All too often they’re the result of shortcuts, of failing to take simple steps to protect yourself to save a little time. The industry is filled with stories of peo …

Plumbers, electricians, carpenters, HVAC techs and many other tradesmen find themselves crawling around attics and crawlspaces on a regular basis. Now they are going to need to bring one more piece of equipment with them - a personal 4-gas monitor. OSHA has recently clarified their standard concerning these very routine work areas and they are officially now classified as confined spaces. Confined spaces are inherently dangerous, and OSHA's not unreasonable response is to require add …

It's a no-brainer. When it comes to choosing the right ventilator for confined space work, it needs to do three things really well: Move large amounts of air Be lightweight Be simple to use How does one go about shopping for these bad boys? Look no further cause we found "The One" in the  ECKO K30 blower/ventilator from Euramco. Unlike traditional blowers with their easily dented metal housings, the portable ECKO K30's corrosive and UV resistant polyethylene …

If your company needs to supply personal hydrogen sulfide monitors to its employees, now is a great time to stock up on BW Honeywell Single Gas H2S detectors. BW Honeywell is the leader in lightweight, reliable H2S detection so finding a GasAlert Clip Extreme H2S Monitor on sale is like finding $20 on the ground. If you have lots of employees, it's like finding thousands of dollars just lying around, and who doesn't like to save money? Workers use H2S monitors, and they lose H2S moni …

Gas monitors need regular calibration and bump testing if you want to be sure they are working properly. Like a guitar, monitors can drift out of tune. You've got a couple of choices to get it working properly. And as everyone who owns a gas monitor knows - whether it's a multi-gas monitor like the GasAlert Micro Clip XT, or a single-gas monitor like the Gas Clip Technologies H2S Monitor - a quick bump test before using it to protect your life is an excellent, and highly recommen …

Gas measurement is without a doubt the most important part of confined space safety. Do it right, and you and your crew go home at the end of the day—do it wrong, and you might never go home again! So if you're a newbie (or even a little rusty), you've got to do your homework. Here's the first lesson: get the right tools! If you already have a gas monitor, take it out and look at it. Without this device you are nothing! It always has to be with you in any confined space — no excuses! But m …

Confined spaces can be very spooky places. With inhabitants like molds, creepy crawlies and deadly gases, it's easy to see why: they're among the harshest places on the planet. A rural Maine community experienced this firsthand when Winfield Studley and Richard Kemp, two workers with Stevens Electric and Pump Services, suddenly went missing on the job. The two had spent the morning draining and servicing a flooded sewage tank connected to a local inn. At some point over the cou …

Gas detection is serious business no matter what type of work you do. Your company may not need the level of protection a petroleum production facility requires, but every company using gas detection technology wants to make a good investment in their monitors. Some work sites need to know if hydrogen sulfide levels change even a small percentage. Others are fine waiting for the alarm to sound. The differences in your gas monitoring needs will affect the type of gas monitor that's right for y …

A customer from the Chinese division of a large petroleum company emailed us this week to ask how often their BW Clip H2S Monitors should be bump tested. Since we sell more of these monitors than any other at PK Safety Supply, it would seem logical that we'd have a ready answer. But we don't. It's not because we don't care, or we don't think it's important. It is. Here's the situation: Officially, the manufacturer BW Honeywell recommends periodically testing the response of the hydro …

This is a great question about the BW Clip Extreme H2S monitor, and I'm surprised we haven't had it before. A customer from our website asks "How long of a shelf life does the monitor have?" The answer is each monitor has a unique turn-on date that is set one year after the manufacturing date. The warranty is tied to this manufacture date as well. BW provides a warranty for one year of shelf life plus the two years after activation. If you have a monitor that is past its turn-o …