Worker Safety
During the worker safety activity, all groups were given a collection of materials to construct a system to lift a container of a toxic substance into another containment container. My group decided to simply use a pool noodle, as pictured above. We bent the pool noodle around the popcorn container and lifted it over the containment container. We then released the container of popcorn to drop into the other container. While this worked in theory, the popcorn splashed out of the containment container and escaped the hazard zone. We then tried the same method again with a different system operator and this time. The popcorn was again lifted but dropped before reaching the other container, spilling all over the floor. This activity proved to be much more complex than I had initially anticipated. Worker safety is a topic that is extremely important and prevalent within today’s society. While this is true, it is also true that many work-related injuries and deaths happen each year. This activity proves the difficulty of keeping people safe in the workplace. Especially in industries that handle dangerous chemicals, as we were pretending to in this activity.