Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
C.
MAINTAINING PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT
When you finish an activity where you are handling pesticides or are ex-
posed to them, remove your personal protective equipment right away. Wash
the outside of your gloves with detergent and water before you remove them.
Consider washing the outside of other chemical-resistant items as well before
removing them. This helps avoid contacting the contaminated part of the
items while you are removing them and helps keep the inside surface uncon-
taminated. If any other clothes have pesticides on them, change them also.
Determine whether the items should be disposed of or cleaned for reuse.
Place reusable items in a plastic bag or hamper away from your other per-
sonal clothes and away from the family laundry. Place disposables in a sepa-
rate plastic bag or container. The pesticides remaining on your personal pro-
tective equipment, work clothing, and other work items could injure persons
who touch them. Do not allow children or pets near them. Do not allow
contaminated gloves, boots, respirators, or other equipment to be washed in
streams, ponds, or other bodies of water.
Clean all reusable personal protective equipment items between uses.
Even if they were worn for only a brief period of exposure to pesticides during
that day, wash them before you wear them again. Pesticide residues that re-
main on the personal protective equipment are likely to continue to move
slowly through the personal protective equipment material, even chemical-
resistant material. If you wear the personal protective equipment again, pesti-
cide may already be on the inside next to your skin. Also, personal protective
equipment that is worn several times between laundering may build up pesti-
cide residues. The residues can reach a level that can harm you, even if you
are handling pesticides that are not highly toxic.
1.
Washing Personal Protective Equipment
Wash pesticide-contaminated items separately from uncontaminated cloth-
ing and laundry. Otherwise, the pesticide residues can be transferred to the
other clothing or laundry and can harm you or your family.
a.
Alert the Persons Who Do the Washing
Be sure that the people who clean and maintain your personal protective
equipment and other work clothes know that they can be harmed by touching
the pesticide that remains on the contaminated items. Tell them that they
should:
