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A fall arrest system is the kind of fall protection which includes the safe stopping of a person already falling. It is one of many forms of fall protection, which also include fall guarding and fall
OSHA specifies under Title 29 of the Code of Federal Regulations that...
Maximum Arresting Force (or M.A.F.) is a term you will hear frequently used in association with fall protection, so it’s better to understand the term before you encounter it (if you’ve already encountered it, better late than never!). In simple terms, M.A.F. is exactly what it sounds like:...
There are some things you can hand to somebody with no instructions and they’ll know how to use them: a pair of boots, a pair of gloves, safety glasses. A fall protection harness is not one of these things. To the untrained eye, a harness is just a jumble of straps and buckles with no...
We often focus here on what you need to do to keep your employees safe and to ensure your company is compliant with the law, but at some point in time, some of you are going to be involved in an OSHA inspection and the outcome may not be as favorable as you’d like. In this post, we’re...
Anchor points and horizontal lifelines are two ways to achieve the same purpose: protecting your employees from a fall. Each method has its pros and cons, as well as appropriate and inappropriate times for use. Perhaps, though, the most important question to ask is:...
Fear of falling is natural. Once believed to occur only as a result of a traumatic experience, it has more recently become considered a condition you are born with. Most people fear falling because – well – gravity. We can’t fly. We don’t bounce. We fall, we land – sometimes...
Because stepladders are such a common tool, even in the home, it is often taken for granted that employees know how to properly use them. This is a dangerous assumption. Most people don’t thoroughly inspect their ladders at home and many wouldn’t know what to look for if they did. Many...
Anytime you are tasked to keep someone safe from falling, one decision must be made first. Do I select a Passive System or Active System?
Understanding the difference between passive and active fall protection is a great place to start.
In the last article, we discussed the first level of control when it comes to protecting employees from recognized hazards: elimination or substitution. The concept, while possibly difficult to implement, was simple to understand. Unfortunately, this second step, engineering...
Things go wrong. Equipment fails. Accidents happen. When discussing the inevitability of injuries in the workplace, these are reasons you will hear to argue against the belief that all incidents are preventable. While a manufacturing defect could occur without forewarning, the vast...
I recently wrote an article detailing how to ensure you are using your fall protection equipment properly. If you are the inquisitive type, it may have left you asking the question, “How, exactly, does a safety harness work?” In reality, there is a fairly simple answer to this question:...
Update: This post was updated in June of 2018 to align with the new Walking-Working Surface Rules posted by OSHA.
Warning line has received a bad reputation over time. Should it have? Maybe. Warning line is the equivalent of someone saying, "Hey, don’t go over there!" When I think of...
For many years now, falls have been the leading cause of death on construction sites. From small residential projects to large commercial structures, people continue to add to the fatal fall statistic – regardless of the focus placed on this epidemic. Sometimes this is the result of a...
Safety is a big issue on construction sites. The ways in which serious accidents can occur are countless, thanks to the nature of construction. Federal OSHA’s statistics show that of the roughly 4,600 fatal work-related accidents in the U.S. in 2011, the most recent year for which data...
Take a look around the neighborhood you live in. How many fences do you see? Probably quite a few, right? And, where you see fences, how many have no gates? I would venture to guess that the answer is “very few if any.” That’s because a fence is put up for a reason: to keep...
As if falling were not enough, falling onto exposed rebar can turn a survivable fall into a disaster. Rebar caps protect the falling worker from impaling themselves on the concrete rebar that is protruding during the construction process.
Rebar...
Trenching and Excavation work is a dangerous task that construction workers face daily. Workers who dig or excavate trenches are at risk of death if they enter an unprotected trench and the walls collapse. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 271 workers died in trenching or excavation...
Some of the safest people on the job do some of the most foolish things at home. It seems that safety takes on a whole new meaning when you’re at home because, well, nobody is making you pay attention to it. OSHA has no jurisdiction over what you do in – or on – your own...
Perhaps you decided to read this because you thought, "Of course not! Everyone knows that is a crazy dangerous, not to mention non-productive." However, studies show that walking and texting are pretty much akin to walking blindfolded.
Researchers at Stony...
The following safety huddle lists the OSHA standards that regulate and define the specifications for warning line systems in construction fall protection. Refer to 29 CFR 1926.502(f) for more details. Remember, workplace safety is everyeverybody's responsibility.
Definition: warning line...
When the conversation turns to fall protection, railings, skylight screens, horizontal lifelines, and mobile anchor points are often discussed , but what about vertical lifelines? We tend to not hear as much about this solution, yet there are many situations in which a vertical lifeline...
Sometimes when working on older buildings or on buildings where the architects kindly left out the fall protection anchors, a non-penetrating anchor system is needed. Weightanka is a non-penetrating roof anchor that uses weight and resistance to safety attach a worker to the roof. A standard
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