We will now interrupt the regularly scheduled program for this Good Old Blaves Micro Podcast. Some might argue when talking about PPE or personal protective equipment that everything comes down to risk assessment. Now, God made us with ten toes, ten fingers, two hands, two feet, two legs, two ears, two eyes, two lungs, and the most critical things go down to one. You have one heart, you have one brain, and you have one life. Alright? And you have to think that in the knife shop, there are so many dangers, especially working with power tools, but just working with any type of tools. If you're using uh hand files and rasps and uh you know scraping instruments and things like that, you can still cause a lot of damage to yourself. We are organic beings that are very soft. Our skin is soft, it's you know it heals, sure, but um there is always a margin of risk that you are accepting whenever you build out your knife shop and you take on the vocation of knives. There are some things that don't heal and they don't grow back. We're not lizards, all right? We don't have tails that snap off and nub up, right? Uh except maybe fingers and toes and stuff. And it's important to know that, especially with your eyes, your ears, and your lungs, that contaminants such as buffing compound, metal dust, micartas and G10s and you know woods that have allergens in them, everything can contribute towards malady that happens later on or abruptly. Um, you know, you can get metal chips in your eyes that make you go blind. You can get um a knife chucked at you uh from a buffer or a grinder, depending on the operation that you're performing. And oftentimes we don't really think about the consequence until it's too late or we're feeling it. So, I mean, if you lose your sight, that's bad. If you lose your hearing, that's not great. If you go into respiratory distress or failure because you got junk in your lungs, then that's detrimental to your life. Um, there there are all sorts of things that you can live without, but your lungs are not one of them. Um, you know, it uh take it from a guy who has a kid who is born with a congenital heart defect, who has lungs that didn't grow out right. I see it every single day. I see some of the problems that she lives with because she doesn't have real healthy lungs. And you can do that to yourself in the knife shop. If you're on the buffing wheel and you are not using a respirator, uh you can get that buffing compound stuck in your lungs. And a lot of the polishes and things uh don't come back up out of your lungs. Um, you know, you can't clear them uh entirely. And the lungs do a really great job of self-healing and cleaning. However, over time you will start to see issues like emphysema or potentially cancers uh or lung failure due to damage, it can only take so much. And so wearing a respirator is a really good way to stop that from happening. And if you clean your shop well and you wear a respirator and you have air filtration, uh you can guard against a lot of these common problems that we are really just understanding uh the science of really, like the like what exactly is going on and how it affects certain aspects of your breathing or your body today. Now, I obviously metal shards in your eyes is pretty self-explanatory, uh, but some complexities with um heavy metals, right? So, I mean, you if you have lead or mercury or other compounds that you're grinding all the time and you're breathing those in, they can actually cause neurological problems in your brain. And you might uh see people get sick from zinc poisoning, or um, if they've welded for a long time, you might see uh like your grandfather has Parkinson's or uh early onset dementia or Alzheimer's or things like that that are neurologically based. And there's a lot of research that's emerging where that can actually be caused by things like welding or painting with heavy metals in it or um working with metals that you're grinding, body shops, all sorts of things like that, especially in the trades. That's something to keep an eye on. Um, it's not so hard to wear uh eye protection. I mean, sometimes it's irritating, but if you can search for a pair of glasses that fits you real well, they're super comfortable and protect your eyes, just do it. Because there's no worse setback than getting something in your eyes and then not being able to see very well or to recover from an injury and you know get back to your hobby or your business. Uh, you know, those setbacks happen quite often, and it's as simple as following some basic secure uh safety procedures, and you can avoid it uh quite a bit of the time. If you're operating a bandsaw, use a push stick maybe. Uh your fingers are not push sticks, uh, not adequate ones, because there's nothing between your finger and that bandsaw blade that's going to save it if uh something slips and your finger goes into it. You just gained yourself a nub. Um the same way goes with wearing loose clothes around things that are rotating. The reality is that even though we might not think about uh well-fitted clothes or shop attire as PPE necessarily, it is because there are certain uh things like long-sleeve shirts, even beards, or things like that that will create hazards for you in the shop and can be ripped off uh or pull you into a machine, and then it doesn't stop and you end up injuring yourself worse as a result. All right. So you when when you're out in the shop, you need to be very cognizant of what could kill you. And the reality is that everything can for the most part. You I mean, you can slip on the floor and hit your head on some big piece of metal equipment that you have. Well, sweep your floor, make sure that there's no sawdust or grease or things like that uh on it, and you solve a lot of problems for yourself. Um, I personally use a very powerful Baldor buffer to buff all my work. Uh, I mean it does everything. And I have a box built around it that's a catchment box. Not only does it help with uh keeping the um the cloth and the debris that come off of the wheels in a central location that I can then clean up, but it also inhibits blades from being caught on the wheels and coming back and being flung at me. It will it will actually catch it and drop it into the box most of the time, and I don't have to worry about it bouncing back on by the wall or the floor, or even most of the time coming back around and hitting me because you know it sucked it in and then pushed it back out and and threw it at me. Um you can do things like that. Um, proper lighting uh so that you know how close you're getting to something. Those are you know PPE type of items. Um when you're using a respirator, make sure that you have appropriate filters for the work that you're doing. Because there's particulate filters, and then there are uh chemical filters. And there are some types of operations, like if you're working with uh micarta or some other materials where it off-gasses uh the uh formaldehyde that was uh used in the making of it, then you can actually breathe that in and get poison because of it. Uh, there's all sorts of chemical reactions that happen when we are grinding different materials, and those fumes or gases uh can eventually get to you. They can make you dizzy or sick, uh, for instance, with uh with zinc poisoning, or sometimes they can uh put you into respiratory distress or failure because your your lungs get burned. Um, you can create acids uh with certain types of chemicals uh that you know cause like sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid and fumes as a result of that. Um, you know, there's chloride gases and everything too. So uh, you know, wear eye protection, wear protection for your lungs, try to evaluate each piece of machinery and the risk factors that it has associated with it, and try to build some controls against that. Because when you do those things, you have a lot less likelihood of incident. It is never zero, but you can diminish that by a little bit of prepping and caring for yourself. Because again, everybody, you only have one life, and it seems really silly to lose that for making knives. And personally, uh, I feel being a little lazy. You can do a lot better, be a lot safer, and go inside from the shop at the end of the day if you really check those things out and and make sure you're following procedures because accidents happen and they happen fast, and oftentimes the the ramifications of them can be disastrous for you. Remember to keep first aid kits and um uh fire extinguishers and things like that inside of your shop because it does not help you if everything is packed away in your closet somewhere that you cannot easily access. Have a personal first aid kit, have tourniquets, have uh uh like clotting agents or stop bleed, um, have lots of band-aids, gauze, wound pack, all of those things are good to have, and in the shop, in a a specific first aid kit that is for the shop that helps to deal with some of those common problems. And if you sum total all of those things, uh, I think you'll have a lot safer and less anxiety driven experience in the shop. I hope that helps.