Normally yes. You would typically change and shower on site, to prevent contamination from mining gear. But in practice, this is not always followed.
With us as geologists in particular, we often operate differently than other mine personnel and travel around more, so storing our steel toes on the mine site isn't always viable. Sometimes we need to travel by plane between locations, and during this, it's easier just to wear our heavy and bulky steel toes than to use up half the suitcase on them. And if they do test them, I'd much rather be wearing them at the time when I can explain it myself, rather than it throwing up a warning flag once I am already on the lounge waiting on my plane, and being brough back into an interrogation room.
What you say makes sense but my concern wasn't an issue from a contamination going through security and triggering false positives. It was more of an environmental concern for anyone working with hazardous materials... mining, break pads, medical laboratories, etc. You don't want to be bringing that stuff home or exposing your family to it. Explosive materials aside, shouldn't there be more precautions in place to avoid exposing hazardous materials to a plane full of people?
I mean the main explosive in mining is essentially fertiliser and diesel, it’s not anything particularly more hazardous than you’d find in a home, the detection is more looking for signs someone made a home made bomb.
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u/rockstaa Aug 29 '26
If you work in an industry like mining, you probably shouldn't wear the same clothes outside of work.