Safety First for the Battery Repairman
1. Do not work on an empty stomach-you can then absorb lead easily.
2. Keep your fingers out of your mouth when at work.
3. Keep your finger nails short and clean.
4. Do not chew tobacco while at work. In handling tobacco, the lead oxides are carried to your mouth. Chewing tobacco does not prevent you from swallowing lead.
5. When you leave the shop at night, and before eating, wash your face, hands, and arms with soap, and clean your nose, mouth, and finger nails.
6. Do not eat in the repair shop.
7. Drink plenty of good milk. It prevents lead poisoning.
8. Use Epsom Salts when constipated. This is very important.
9. Bathe frequently to prevent lead poisoning.
10. Leave your working clothes in the shop.
11. It is better not to wear a beard or mustache. Keep your hair covered with a cap.
12. Before sweeping the shop dampen the floor to keep down the dust.
13. Do not drink beer or whisky, or any other alcoholic liquors. These weaken your system and make you more susceptible to lead poisoning.
14. In handling lead, wear gloves as much as possible, and wash and dry the gloves every day that you wear them.
15. Wear goggles to keep lead and acid out of your eyes.
16. When melting lead in a hydrogen flame, as in burning on the top connectors, the fumes given off may be blown away by a stream of air. The air supply to the flame may be tapped for this purpose.
17. The symptoms of lead poisoning are: gums darken or become blue, indigestion, colic, constipation, loss of appetite, muscular pain. In the later stages there is muscular weakness and paralysis. The hands become limp and useless.
18. Wear rubber shoes or boots. Leather shoes should be painted with a hot mixture of equal parts of paraffine and beeswax.
19. Wear woolen clothes if possible. Cotton clothing should be dipped in a strong solution of baking soda and dried. Wear a flannel apron covered with sacking.
20. Keep a bottle of strong ammonia handy. If you should spill acid on your clothes, apply some of the ammonia immediately to neutralize the acid, which will otherwise burn a hole in your clothes.
21. Keep a stone, earthenware, or porcelain jar filled with a solution of washing soda or baking soda (bicarbonate of soda). Rinse your hands in this solution occasionally to prevent the acid from irritating them.
22. If you should splash acid in your eye, wash it out immediately with warm water, and drop olive oil on the eye. If you have no olive oil at hand, do not wait to get some, but use any, lubricating oil, or vaseline.