Rant: I read that some old foundries in Pittsburgh used to pour iron at 2800 degrees Fahrenheit without any modern safety gear

I was looking up some history on steel towns and stumbled on a photo essay about the Homestead Works. The caption said guys would work right next to the open hearth furnaces in just heavy wool clothes and leather aprons. No face shields like we have now, just maybe some smoked glasses. It's wild to think about the risk they took every day. Do you think we've gotten too cautious with PPE, or were they just insanely tough back then?

3 comments

3 Comments

christopher677d ago

And honestly, it wasn't about being tough, it was about not knowing any better. Those wool clothes would probably just fuse to your skin in a real accident, which happened way too often. We have better gear now because we finally learned from all those horrible injuries and deaths. Calling it "too cautious" misses the point, it's about not accepting that level of risk as normal anymore.

ray6487d ago

Wait, didn't they also use leather, @christopher67?

thomas837d ago

Exactly, @christopher67. We stopped seeing death as a job perk.