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Unintentional Injuries to Disabled Persons: An Unrecognized Yet Preventable Problem
Published in James M. Rippe, Lifestyle Medicine, 2019
Louis Hugo Francescutti, David A. Sleet, Linda Hill, Henry Xiang
Disability research has resulted in interventions that have materially improved the activities of daily living for those with disabilities, especially among elderly populations, as evidenced by state-of-the-art mobility aids such as fall protection alarm systems, motorized wheelchairs, walkers, and walking canes adapted for wintry weather. Despite growing injury rates among the elderly and new technology, mobility aids are still underused. For example, research has shown that individuals with disabilities experience nearly three times more falls and other injuries compared to those without disabilities.6,7 With the advent of motorized wheelchairs, it would have been expected to see a decline in injuries; however, wheelchair related injuries in the United States doubled from 1991 to 2003.5 There are still significant risks for wheelchair-bound adults, especially negotiating in traffic.9
Identifying critical behaviors
Published in E. Scott Geller, Working Safe, 2017
Some outcomes of behaviors also can be dealt with in singular terms, like “using ear plugs,” “using a vehicle safety belt,” “climbing a ladder that is properly tied off,” “working on a scaffold with appropriate fall protection,” and “repairing equipment that had been locked out correctly.” With a proper definition, an observer could readily count occurrences of these safe behaviors (or outcomes) during a systematic audit.
A case for change
Published in Sidney Dekker, The Safety Anarchist, 2017
For those who are more inclined to relax with fitness activities after their 12-hour shift in the open pit mine, there is a little gym in one of the trailers. Naturally, miners are required to wear their steel-capped boots in the gym, as the heavy weights could inflict even more injury on toes than a shampoo bottle. Weights are to be stacked or shelved not higher than the waist, so that temporary occupants of the gym trailer could be exempted from the requirement to wear a hard hat. A swimming pool was ruled out, even though the climate is appropriate for it, when Captive Crowds learned through an extensive risk assessment that drowning accidents can occur in water of 30 cm (about a foot) deep. Water shallower than that would preclude any meaningful exercise. But there is a tennis court, the height of luxury in Paradise. It is even fitted with an umpire’s chair, so that games can be appropriately and fairly adjudicated. Captive Crowds has adopted almost all of the mining company’s safety rules, which includes its stipulations regarding working at height. In a unique triumph of safety managerialism, it has discovered that the seating surface of the umpire chair measures in at 8 feet and 2 inches from the ground. This puts it just over the regulated height at which fall protection must be worn. Umpires – that is, volunteer miners who watch their buddies play a game and do the convoluted quasi-French counting demanded by the rules of the game – thus fit themselves with a fall-protection harness, carefully ascend the stairs of the umpire chair (somehow ensuring four points of contact) and click themselves into security once breaching the 8-foot limit. This doesn’t happen much nowadays. Nobody plays tennis in Paradise anymore, because it’s too hard to run after a little bouncy ball in steel-capped boots. And there’s not a lot of time in any case. At 9 pm, a curfew descends on the camp. Noise is banned; movement is frowned upon. Only the crickets have the freedom to party.
Performance of barrier systems and functions in the construction industry
Published in International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics, 2023
Francisco Salguero-Caparrós, María Martínez-Rojas, María del Carmen Pardo-Ferreira, Juan Carlos Rubio-Romero
In relation to the systems and functions of barriers, the results show that in the predominant circumstance of accidents in construction, such as the fall of the worker, especially at height, the most commonly infringed barrier system is the physical or material barrier. In the construction industry, collective protection systems, such as guardrails, safety nets, etc., can be considered as physical barriers [44]. However, from the analysis of the barrier functions associated with physical systems, it can be deduced that in two out of three cases it is due to the absence of a system that restricts or prevents movement. This may be due to inadequate or even non-existent use of personal protective equipment (PPE) such as safety belts or harnesses [45,46]. However, fall protection measures such as safety belts and harnesses are considered to be the last barrier to prevent injuries.
Validation of the energy balance approach for design of vertical lifeline systems
Published in International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics, 2021
Wen Cong Lim, Shazed Mohammad Tashrif, Yang Miang Goh, Soo Jin Adrian Koh
Work at height is almost unavoidable in industries such as the construction industry. Construction workers working at height must be protected by fall protection systems such as barricades, safety nets or personal fall arrest systems (PFASs). The minimum height requirement beyond which fall protection becomes mandatory for workers varies between different jurisdictions and countries. For example, in the USA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration requires fall protection systems to be used when the work is conducted 1.83 m (6 feet) above the lower level [5]. In Singapore, hazardous work at height is defined as work that can result in a fall distance of 3 m or more [6]. In contrast, the UK Work At Height (WAH) Regulations [7] do not stipulate a specific height or fall distance before work is defined as work at height, instead any fall that is liable to cause injury is classified as work at height. Barricades and safety nets are usually preferred because they are passive fall protection measures that do not require the active participation of its users. However, they are not always feasible due to space constraints in workplaces like construction sites. In cases where deployment of barricades and safety nets are not feasible, a PFAS will be required.
Horizontal lifelines – review of regulations and simple design method considering anchorage rigidity
Published in International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics, 2018
The fall protection strategy consists of eliminating the fall risk at the source if possible, by planning most of the work at floor level or by having a structure to provide protection. If this is not possible, then the primary option is to use passive collective fall protection systems such as guardrails or safety nets. A passive fall protection system does not require any action from the user to activate it. As a last resort, an active system (requiring some actions from the worker) such as a personal fall arrest system (PFAS) is given to workers. One type of PFAS is a horizontal lifeline (HLL). A HLL is a system composed of a synthetic or wire rope, installed horizontally between two anchors, to which a worker attaches his personal fall protection system. It provides a continuous anchor for the attachment of fall arrest equipment. This type of PFAS allows the workers to have a larger freedom of movement compared with fixed anchoring points. It increases their safety by reducing the number of times the workers have to connect/disconnect their lanyard from the anchorage connector. Once the worker attaches himself to the HLL, he is protected from the beginning to the end of his tasks.