At 7:50 on the morning of 1 October, only four names were left on the duty roster. The veteran hands had gone home for the holiday. Covering their shifts were two young workers just off probation and one borrowed from the assembly shop.

Before start-up, shift leader Old Zhou stopped them at the doorway: helmets on and chin straps tightened, change into safety shoes as soon as you enter the workshop. At the grinding station he handed over a CKY-135FW pair of goggles and a CKL-3117 face shield together, then checked the other man's cut-resistant gloves and long-sleeved workwear — the face shield stops frontal spatter, the goggles catch the fragments that slip in around the edges, and both together are what counts as complete.

Old Zhou's routine lands squarely on what regional emergency management departments flag for the double holiday: equipment left idle for long periods is prone to failure; once work resumes, temporary electrical work, hot work, maintenance and desilting all cluster together; and with managers away on leave, the site loses a pair of watching eyes. Many localities explicitly require that special operations during the holiday be approved at a higher level, and that start-ups, shutdowns and maintenance work in principle not be scheduled.

High-risk point one: the "stand-in face" in the first hour

The first thing a holiday changes is the people. Dispatched labour, temporary hires, borrowed support staff and interns — many of them have no equipment of their own and simply grab a spare, or borrow a colleague's for the day. It looks like they are wearing protection, but the protection is nominal.

Clause 3.5 of GB 39800.1-2020, the Specification for the Provision of Personal Protective Equipment — Part 1: General, is blunt: the employer shall provide and manage PPE for the dispatched workers it uses, its temporary hires, the interns it accepts and other outsiders permitted to enter the work site. "Not our own employee" does not mean "not someone who needs a complete kit." Clause 3.2 further requires equipment to match the work conditions, the hazard and its severity, and to fit the worker — goggles that do not seal send fragments straight through the gap, and a loose helmet flies off at the moment of impact.

The law presses from both sides. Article 45 of the Work Safety Law requires production and business units to supply labour protection articles meeting national or industry standards and to supervise and train workers in wearing and using them according to the rules; Article 57 requires workers to carry out their post safety responsibilities and to wear and use PPE correctly.

High-risk point two: cutting and grinding squeezed out by rush orders

Holiday orders always carry the tone of "this has to ship this week," and the thing most easily saved on site is those few dozen seconds: the face shield feels stuffy, so the worker wears only goggles at the angle grinder. That is wrong — spectacle-type goggles cannot withstand high-speed spatter.

Clause 8.3 of GB 14866-2023, the General Technical Specification for Eye and Face Protectors, divides high-speed particle impact into three speed classes: low speed, 45 m/s, which spectacles, eye shields and face shields can all meet; medium speed, 80 m/s, which only eye shields and face shields can meet; and high speed, 120 m/s, which only face shields can meet. So beside a grinding wheel or a cutting machine, the correct setup is helmet plus face shield plus goggles, along with cut-resistant gloves, long-sleeved workwear and safety shoes. The standard anticipated layering too: clause 3.4 of GB 39800.1-2020 requires that when several items are provided together, compatibility and functional substitutability be taken into account — a face shield and goggles pressing against each other and pushing the lens off-centre quietly discounts the protection.

High-risk point three: the casual "quick bit of hot work"

Holiday maintenance — a quick weld, a quick cut — often happens with no work permit and nobody watching. Article 43 of the Work Safety Law provides that dangerous operations such as blasting, lifting, hot work and temporary electrical work shall be supervised on site by dedicated personnel; Article 101, item (3) sets the penalty: failure to assign dedicated on-site safety supervision draws an order to correct within a time limit and a fine of up to 100,000 yuan, and if the failure continues past the deadline, suspension of production or business for rectification plus a fine of between 100,000 and 200,000 yuan.

Welding eye and face protection has hard numbers as well. GB 3609.1—2025, effective 1 September 2026, is a mandatory standard replacing the 2008 edition; its Annex G takes manual metal arc welding as the baseline, selecting shade numbers 8 to 14, and 1.2 to 4 for helpers. Welding helmet or face shield, welding-specific gloves, flame-retardant workwear and safety shoes — none may be left short.

High-risk point four: the "blade you cannot see clearly" on night shift

Holiday duty often stretches to twelve hours, with a day shift followed by a night shift. Once fatigue sets in, the eyes surrender first: yellowed old lenses and face shields covered in scratches magnify every problem. Clause 7.1 of GB 14866-2023 requires that eye and face protection products without filtering effect transmit at least 85% of visible light at the reference point; clause 8.6 counts scratches, cracks and mould spots within a 30 mm radius of the lens centre as surface defects. Night-shift lighting is already poor, and judging the path of fragments through a fogged lens distorts distance.

High-risk point five: the big wash-down before knocking off

As the shift ends, someone wanting "a clean start tomorrow" rinses equipment surfaces with thinner and wipes the floor while they are at it. Regional holiday notices call this out repeatedly: it is strictly forbidden to use flammable and explosive chemicals such as thinner in excess to clean equipment, facilities and the work site, and overlapping operations such as hot work must be rigorously prevented.

Cleaning is chemical work, and protection must be matched to the hazard. Clause 3.1 of GB 39800.1-2020 requires that where occupational hazards and risk exist, the employer shall provide PPE meeting national standards. The correct setup is helmet plus goggles or face shield, plus chemical-resistant gloves, plus appropriate protective clothing, with ventilation and eyewash equipment in place — not a thin pair of gloves and a hose.

The three pitfalls most easily stepped into

Pitfall one: treating "not our own employee" as "not someone who needs a complete kit." Clause 3.5 covers exactly temporary workers, interns and outside contractors — and they appear in the accident statistics just the same.

Pitfall two: using spectacle-type goggles against high-speed spatter. Clause 8.3 is clear that the high-speed class can only be met by a face shield; pick the wrong model and the protection exists only on paper.

Pitfall three: keeping "we will replace it after the holiday" within easy reach. Clause 5.3.1 of GB 39800.1-2020 lists four grounds for retiring and replacing equipment: inspection finds it non-conforming, it is past its expiry date, it has ceased to function, and so on. A cracked helmet shell, a scratched lens, an out-of-date filter cartridge — replace each on sight, no approval needed.

What an enterprise can do right now

1. Add an "equipment issue confirmation sheet" beside the duty roster: who is on shift, which model they received, whether the trial fit sealed properly — signed off.

2. Hot work, maintenance and temporary electrical work must all be approved before anyone starts, and someone must be watching on site.

3. Count the spares cabinet tonight: goggles, face shields, helmets and filter cartridges — one brand-new spare of each, so a complete set can be issued on demand.

4. Add three minutes to the pre-shift meeting: state which high-risk points apply today, lay the complete sets out on the table, and make up whatever is missing for whoever is short.

Working hard through the holiday is no disgrace. Getting home on luck is what is frightening. Who is on duty at your plant this National Day? Tell us how you handle it in the comments, and we will put together a "non-stop production holiday checklist."

This article is compiled from current standards and laws and regulations. For implementation, follow the standard texts and your own organisation's rules.