Health and safety - The Hempcrete Topic: Designing and Building with Hemp-lime - page 170

to enable the light touch that plastering demands. Consider using barrier cream and mois-
turizer. Always wear goggles when working above head height - plastering a ceiling is the
classic way of getting lime in your eyes. When mixing up lime plasters, wear mask and
goggles whenever there is lime dust flying about.
Working practices
Safe working practices during the mixing and placing of hempcrete play an important role
in keeping harm to a minimum. They can be summarized as follows:
Keep people clear of the mixing area unless necessary, whenever a mix is being pre-
pared.
Put barrier cream on your hands at the start of the day, as lime will inevitably find its
way under your gloves somehow.
At the end of the working day you may find that low-level exposure to binder dust,
while not actually causing irritation, has dried out your skin, especially on your hands,
to the point where it starts to crack. At this point it is essential to apply a heavy-duty
moisturizer to replenish the moisture levels in your skin, otherwise the next day binder
dust will easily find its way into the cracks in the surface of your skin and will cause ir-
ritation.
Unfortunately, the freshly mixed hempcrete contains thousands of small particles of
wet, binder-coated hemp shiv, which are the perfect delivery system for lime burns.
These small particles tend to work themselves inside gloves or clothing, and then re-
main there to rub against your skin. This is the reason that we wear latex gloves under
the thick PVC gloves, but it is also important to check your clothing and gloves regu-
larly and remove any particles of shiv at the earliest opportunity.
Be aware that latex under-gloves rupture fairly easily, so check them from time to time
and don a new pair as necessary. At break times and the end of the day, shake out the
thick PVC gloves (which last 'forever'), in order to remove small particles of lime-
covered hemp, and at the end of the week, give them a wash out and hang them up to
dry.
Wear dressings over any open cuts, especially on your hands, to prevent lime entering
them.