Health and safety - The Hempcrete Topic: Designing and Building with Hemp-lime - page 167

Precautionary measures
Despite your best efforts you will not be able to completely avoid people coming into con-
tact with the binder dust, so the most important precautionary measure is to always have
an appropriate first aid kit on-site (see page 113 ) .
As with any hazardous substance, the first step to minimizing harm is the correct storage
and handling of bags of binder. These usually arrive on a pallet, with the inevitable thin
layer of loose dust over the outside of the bags from where bags have burst at some point
in the warehousing or transport systems.
If moving pallets of binder around with a forklift, take extra care not to burst any more
bags. If moving bags around by hand, for example when feeding the mixer, use the correct
PPE (see opposite) and gently shake the loose dust off each bag before lifting it. Try to
avoid holding the bag against your body; for example, you could put four bags in a bar-
row and wheel them across, rather than making four trips on foot with a bag held on your
shoulder, rubbing the dust against your neck. Try to avoid inhaling the dust.
Binder should be stored in a cool, dry, draught-free place, which is ideally separate from
the working area, to minimize the number of people who have to come into contact with
the dust. Care should be taken to avoid the bags of binder coming into contact with mois-
ture.
Any spills of binder dust should be dealt with straight away, either by carefully vacuuming
the dry dust or by wetting down with a water spray and then carefully sweeping it up and
shovelling into bags. Never sweep up dry dust, as this just disperses it into the air.
Empty binder bags should be promptly and carefully disposed of into plastic sacks kept
near the mixer. These sacks should be closed up so that dust is not dispersed from the
empty packaging.
Personal protective equipment
At Hemp-LimeConstruct we always keep the following full range of PPE with us: masks,
goggles, gloves (both latex and thick PVC chemical-resistant types), waterproof clothing
(long-legged and long-sleeved), knee pads, barrier creams and moisturizers. However, it's
not the case that everyone needs to be wearing this stuff all the time!