Is your home safe
with construction workers?

I WAS visiting my parents the other day and was working on my column when one of the helpers came running to the study, frantically asking for help.

My parents were having their roof replaced so there was a crew of construction workers, one of whom had cut his hand while handling roofing material. It was a serious injury, the sharp metal apparently slicing across his palm and cutting all his fingers. The bleeding was profuse so I quickly improvised a tourniquet of sorts.

While we waited for the bleeding to stop, I asked one of his companions if they were using gloves, and he said they only had two for a crew of six. As we talked some more, I realized the workers had almost no awareness of safety issues. Most of them, for example, were in slippers, which is again inviting accidents.

The previous night, I had gone to the garden to feed the fish and found an extension cord lying next to the pond, soaking in the wet mud. The workers had left it at the end of the day and as I rolled up the cord, I realized it was still plugged into an outlet!

I talked with my parents about the worker's hand injury, and other occupational safety problems, and told them to take this up with the contractor. I also decided to do a column about the importance of checking workers' safety in homes. Whether you're building a new house, renovating or just having repairs. Incidents like leaving the extension cord out in the open while plugged in aren't trivial, especially if you have children and pets in the house.

Call me obsessive, but you can't overlook the smallest details. Construction workers are among the worst litterbugs imaginable. I've found cigarette butts, food wrappers and nails in the fishpond for example, but that's a minor problem compared with construction materials strewn around the garden, including pieces of scrap metal with their sharp edges jutting out.

Before you start a job, interview your contractor and ask if he provides safety education, and protective gear appropriate for the work, for example gloves, hard hats, eye goggles, shoes. Actually, all these are required by law but contractors rarely follow them.

I've also been renovating my own house and have been fortunate in having a contractor who cares about his workers, but you'll find it's still important to look beyond the legal requirements. For example, after they took down the house I insisted on installing a flush toilet. I was insistent about hygiene because I'd noticed two of the workers bringing in their very pregnant wives to live with them on the site.

I did wonder if it was appropriate to have pregnant women around but I figured, too, they were better off on the construction site rather than being home alone in an urban poor shanty. If they went into labor, it was important that their husbands were around to rush them to the hospital. Both of them did eventually go into labor on the site, and delivered safely.

"Suerte 'yan!" [That's good luck!] my contractor and architect both told me about the births, almost as if to console me because a few weeks after the renovation started, one worker died in his sleep, supposedly from "bangungot" [nightmare death syndrome]. That meant bringing in a priest to say Mass and to assure the workers the deceased was at peace and wasn't coming back to haunt them.

For long construction projects, expect a whole life cycle of events to occur, together with all its pathos. I had talked with one of the pregnant women and asked her where she intended to have the baby. She gave me one of those bashful smiles, looked to the ground and answered, "Ewan ko po" [I don't know, sir.] She had her prenatal checkups at a health center, but had no obstetrician, no pediatrician. After she delivered, I congratulated the father but he didn't seem to be the least bit excited or happy about the new baby.

I never got to interview the two pregnant women but I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of them had been a household helper. My architect told me that one time she'd seen the neighbor's helper bringing some snacks to the construction workers. My contractor confirmed that this happens quite often as workers and household helpers in the neighborhood begin to flirt with each other. We shouldn't forget these construction workers are considered prize catches for household helpers. Each worker is a potential Prince Charming who might marry them and (they hope) take them away from poverty and their humdrum life.

I wouldn't forbid courtship, of course, but problems do arise when you have married construction workers seducing young naive helpers. Babies aren't just born on the construction sites; sometimes they're made there, and unfortunately, once the construction job is over, the workers disappear, leaving their girlfriends to fend for themselves and the baby.

When you think about it, even if it isn't your house being renovated or constructed, you better watch out for the neighbor's construction workers! Lecture your own helpers on family planning... and on cunning amorous males.

If I might get back to the worker with the cut hand, I realized the problem wasn't just the lack of awareness of occupational safety but of basic health literacy. This particular worker, who was only 18, had first wrapped his cut hand with a filthy rag. When I told him we needed to treat the wound, he resisted, insisting the rag was enough. It was one little battle after another, coaxing him to agree to remove the rag, have the hand washed, and have iodine dabbed on.

When I asked him how he was feeling, he said he felt dizzy. I first thought it was the blood he had lost but as we talked, I learned he hadn't had breakfast. I finally convinced him to let our driver take him to the hospital. At the emergency room, the doctors cleaned his wound again and then said they needed to stitch it, at which point he scampered off, insisting he was all right and needed to go home.

Note that my mother and I had assured him we would take care of all medical expenses, but he was obviously scared to death of doctors and hospitals. He hasn't shown up again in the construction site and probably never got the wound stitched, never got a tetanus shot.

There's more to this story then than occupational health and safety. The fact that an 18-year-old doesn't understand the basics about germs and infections tells us where our educational system is. Add on contractors who don't care about what happens to their workers, and you have many serious catastrophes waiting to happen, affecting the workers, their families and your own household.