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Dress for Success: PPE for Distilleries

There are all sorts of hazards in a working distillery, and a culture of safety starts at the top—with attention to standards and investment in personal protective equipment.

Colleen Gall Moore Dec 21, 2023 - 12 min read

Dress for Success: PPE for Distilleries Primary Image

Photo: Matt Graves

How people show up to work is an important foundation for safety. The work in a distillery involves working with chemicals, handling hot fluids, and moving materials around the distillery for different aspects of production. That kind of work demands the right kind of protection.

Any setting where distilling is happening will have thermal, physical, and chemical hazards. Every distillery owner should walk through their facility to itemize the specific hazards present in their own unique mix of processes, technology, staff expertise, and experience. A qualified industrial hygienist or safety professional can assist in assessing hazards and helping to select personal protective equipment (PPE) that is appropriate to your specific workplace.

The next step is specifying the standard level of equipment employees are expected to wear. In many manufacturing settings, this equates to eye protection, hearing protection, safety shoes or boots, long pants, and shirts—the last two made of a natural material, such as cotton. Employees working with ground grain likely will need a fit-tested respirator for the dustier portions of the process. Many general manufacturing facilities also require head protection or “bump caps.”

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Colleen Moore is an industrial hygienist working on an MS degree in Occupational and Environmental Hygiene from University of British Columbia in Vancouver and is a co-owner of Dalkita Architecture & Construction, which specializes in working with craft distilleries throughout North America.

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