Brad Evanoff and Vicki Kaskutas have written an article for Occupational Health & Safety Online on preventing falls in construction: The statistics are grim. Falls are the number one killer of construction workers, accounting for approximately one-third of construction fatalities. A typical day sees one construction worker fall to his or her death on the job, with several more hurt and hospitalized. Most studies suggest residential construction is even more hazardous than commercial construction. That’s why OSHA has launched a campaign to prevent falls in construction and why OSHA has a new, stringent fall protection policy for residential construction sites. Read the rest of the article...
Read MoreIn the NIOSH eNewsletter portion called “From The Director’s Desk,” Dr John Howard highlights the Campaign to Prevent Falls in Construction as a success of partnership in action: The Fall Prevention Campaign provides an example of our success in marshaling diverse partners to disseminate and use strategies on a large scale that would be difficult for any one agency, company, union, or professional safety organization to undertake alone. Read the rest the Director’s note...
Read MoreAn article from Vicki Kaskutas and Brad Evanoff highlights the advantage of OSHA’s emphasis on preventing falls in construction to equipment rental companies: Residential construction contractors are being asked to take more responsibility for fall prevention on the jobsite but may not be familiar with many of the newest work platform and fall arrest technologies. Rental businesses can provide an important service by keeping abreast of both the regulations and the newest products. Keeping a variety of fall safety and ‘fall-safe’ products in stock, and promoting their use, can aid your customers with OSHA-compliance issues, save workers from injury or death, and boost your bottom line. Read the rest of the article...
Read MoreLife Lines, a publication of the Laborers’ Health and Safety Fund, has published an article and infographic about the dangers of heights in construction. From the article: Working at heights carries risk. About five American construction workers are killed every week by falls from heights, 248 of them in 2011 alone. New data from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) show you don’t have to fall very far for the fall to be deadly. In 2011, CFOI began collecting information on the height of fatal falls. In construction, almost half of the fatal falls (48.8 percent) were from 20 feet or less, 14 percent were from ten feet or less and some were even less than six feet. Only 21.8 percent of victims fell from more than 30 feet. If visual learning is more your style, much of the same information can be gleaned from the...
Read MoreRecently the Fatality Maps for 2012 were updated to include data through September 2012. Now, the data behind the map is available here (excel file). Do you know of a construction fatality that belongs on the map? Please email...
Read MorePete Stafford of CPWR- The Center For Construction Research and Training has written a column at ISHN raising awareness about preventable falls in construction. From the article: Safety and health professionals, academics, and government officials — perhaps you who are reading this — have worked tirelessly to make a dent in these tragic statistics. Thankfully, a dent has been made, as we see injuries trending downward. Yet fatality rates remain stubbornly, and unacceptably, high. It was time to do something different. It was time for a national campaign to reduce (even bring an end to) the No. 1 killer of construction workers — falls. Continue reading Pete Stafford’s column at...
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