Whether You Measure in Yards or Metres, One is the Magic Number
New workers, particularly young new workers, often lack the experience to know how closely they can approach a potential hazard without putting their safety in danger.
If they guess wrong, as many inexperienced workers have, it’s incredibly easy to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, with tragic consequences.
So how close is too close? Bill Dickerson, a senior health and safety advisor for a major Ontario electricity producer who has a passion for young worker safety awareness, has developed an innovative answer to that question. He calls it the Magic Metre or for our readers in the United States, the Magic Yardstick.
“The Magic Metre or Magic Yardstick is a visual image new workers can use to protect themselves from all kinds of hazards,” says the 25-year safety professional. “A Magic Metre is the distance from your nose to your fingertips. It’s almost like a 360 degree bubble all around you, including up and down.”
When delivering high school safety talks or new worker orientations, Dickerson offers the following 11 practical applications for the Magic Metre:
1. Noise: If you have to raise your voice above a normal talking level to be heard one Magic Metre away, you are likely exposed to (a sound pressure level) over 85 decibels and require hearing protection.
2. Moving Equipment: When working around moving equipment such as chain drives, conveyors, etc., if you maintain a Magic Metre from your outstretched fingertips, you are unlikely to fall into the equipment or contact a pinch point. The same concept works for hot pipes, electrical hazards, etc.
3. Biohazards: If you maintain a Magic Metre from a fellow worker with a cough or cold you are likely beyond the “sneeze spray zone.” Maintain the same Magic Metre from blood and body fluids and products unless protected.
4. Tools: Protect yourself and others by maintaining a Magic Metre or “safety bubble” around yourself when using power tools, hammers, axes, etc.
5. Chemicals: From the material safety data sheet (MSDS) determine how many Magic Metres are required between you and chemicals you may be exposed to.
6. Workplace Violence: Maintain a Magic Metre between you and an angry customer or co-worker. Position yourself to minimize your exposure as a target, and protect vital areas.
7. Eye Protection: Wear your safety glasses or goggles within a Magic Metre of any process that could result in flying objects.
8. Fall Protection: A worker may be seriously hurt in a fall or poorly planned jump of even less than a Magic Metre. You require fall arrest protection if your feet are two Magic Metres above the next level.
9. Lifting and carrying: The safest zone for carrying loads is within the Magic Metre from your knees to your shoulders.
10. Call Before You Dig: Don’t dig (including hand digging) within a Magic Metre of either side of a utility location marker (hydro, gas, telephone, etc.).
11. Falling Objects: Almost anything that falls a Magic Metre onto you will hurt!
Read MorePPE Non-Compliance is Top Workplace Safety Issue
If you have trouble with workers not wearing required personal protective equipment, you’re far from alone.
A survey conducted by Kimberly-Clark Professional found that 98 percent of the 132 safety professionals who attended the American Society of Safety Engineers’ 2010 conference and expo had observed workers who weren’t wearing PPE when they should have been doing so.
And 30 percent of the respondents said they had observed PPE non-compliance on numerous occasions. Most of the safety professionals who were polled said PPE non-compliance was their top workplace safety issue.
The problem seems to be getting worse. A 2008 Kimberly-Clark poll found that 89 percent of safety professionals had observed workers working without PPE. The figures for 2007 and 2006 were 87 percent and 85 percent respectively.
Gina Tsiropoulos, manufacturing segment marketing manager for Kimberly-Clark, called the growing trend alarming, saying that it was a serious threat to worker health and safety.
“Whether this is a result of economic conditions, a flawed approach to safety programs, younger workers who are more inclined to take greater risks or some other reason, it’s essential that workers wear PPE when it is required,” she says. “PPE protects workers against injury, but it will not work if workers fail to use it and use it properly.”
Forty-two percent of the safety professionals surveyed said that failure to use eye protection was their most commonly observed PPE infraction. The second most common type of non-compliance was lack of hearing PPE.
The top five reasons safety professionals are given by workers who aren’t wearing PPE are:
1. It is uncomfortable.
2. It makes the worker too warm.
3. PPE isn’t available near the work task.
4. It doesn’t fit properly.
5. It looks unattractive.
Asked what solutions they have tried or intended to try to improve PPE compliance, the safety professionals’ top response was “improving existing education and training programs.”
Other potential solutions to the problem included:
- Increasing monitoring of employees,
- Purchasing more comfortable PPE,
- Tying compliance to individual performance evaluations,
- Purchasing more stylish PPE, and
- Developing incentive programs to encourage greater PPE compliance.
Topping the respondents’ wish list was the development of PPE that automatically adjusts to fit different body types, hands, heads and faces. Next was PPE with customizable style and design options, so that workers could select PPE based on their own individual tastes and safety requirements. Third on the wish list was PPE containing integrated climate control features, providing cooling or warmth as needed.
Read MoreInaccurate Assumptions About Hearing PPE Can Hurt Your Workers
Listen up. Poor assumptions about hearing protection can ruin your company’s hearing conservation program and expose your workers to hearing loss, says Brad Witt, director of hearing conservation for Howard Leight/Sperian Hearing Protection LLC.
Witt has developed a list of six of the most common bad assumptions about hearing protection for noise-exposed workers. Here’s the list:
False Assumption 1: Hearing protection is selfexplanatory. “Assuming that proper use of hearing protection is fairly intuitive—just put it in your ear—many safety managers provide little or no training in how to use protection properly. Or they generously assume that workers will read the manufacturer’s instructions on the packaging,” says Witt. For proper fit of earplugs, roll down a foam earplug into a small crease-free cylinder, pull the outer ear up and back to open the ear canal, insert the earplug and hold it in place while it expands. For proper fit of earmuffs, move aside any thick hair and seat the earmuff so that it encloses the entire ear.
False Assumption 2: Any earplug in the ear is blocking some noise. An earplug simply sitting in the bowl of the outer ear, without sealing the ear canal, offers little protection from noise. Witt says it may actually increase the noise level by creating a resonance cavity in the ear canal. A proper-fitting earplug is hardly visible when looking at the wearer face to face. A poor-fitting one protrudes from the ear.
False Assumption 3: An earplug inserted halfway into the ear blocks about half the noise. If a well-fitted earplug blocks 30 decibels of noise, one fitted halfway should block about 15 decibels, right? Wrong. It often provides zero noise attenuation. Witt says workers frequently remove their earplugs halfway so they can hear critical sounds such as warning signals, co-workers’ voices, machine maintenance sounds or communication radios. By doing so they are receiving virtually no hearing protection. The solution for being able to hear critical sounds while still protecting one’s hearing is to use earplugs that provide noise reduction ratings lower than 30 dB.
False Assumption 4: Cut the Noise Reduction Rating (NRR) in half to predict real-world protection. Witt says many studies have shown that noise attenuation in real-world conditions is sometimes far below what is measured under laboratory conditions. However, he says that the 50 percent de-rating method defined by OSHA is “arbitrary and usually wrong.” Actual real world attenuation varies widely among workers.
False Assumption 5: There’s no way to measure real attenuation on a worker wearing earplugs. Witt says there are several methods of measuring real-world attenuation on workers wearing earplugs. One method called VeriPRO gives workers a listening test without earplugs, then while wearing the right earplug and finally, the left earplug. The difference in these results is a measurement of how much protection is being offered by the earplugs.
False Assumption 6: There’s no way to measure the noise dose of a worker under the hearing protectors (at the eardrums) throughout the workday. In fact, miniature microphones are available that can be inserted under earplugs or earmuffs to measure the noise dose and if the noise exceeds safe levels, corrections
Read MoreTechnology Ain’t Always Grand When it Comes to Workplace Safety
High-tech devices from cell phones to iPods, are negatively impacting safety for workers and the public, according to risk management expert Teresa Long, who says employers need to “wake up and smell the risk.”
“Most assuredly, the insurance company and their underwriters are standing downwind and it’s only a matter of time before they start sniffing around to see if employers have language in place prohibiting the use of cell phones while driving,” says Long, director of agency services for the Institute of WorkComp Professionals in Asheville, NC.
She uses the term “intexticated” to describe drivers who are distracted while sending and reading text messages while moving in traffic. Long cites incidents such as that of a Boston trolley driver who, while sending a text message, crashed the trolley into a car, causing several injuries, and a Los Angeles area commuter train operator whose texting activities resulted in a train crash that killed 25 people.
Research conducted by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute revealed that a truck driver looking down while texting for a mere six seconds while motoring at 55 miles per hour (90 km/h) will travel the entire length of a football field without realizing he has traveled so far, so quickly. Long says employers need to be aware of the potential ramifications of having truck drivers, delivery drivers and sales staff using high-tech communication devices while moving in traffic.
“Some businesses have already noted the number of injuries and rising costs associated with workplace distractions by adopting policies on banning cell phones,” she says. “These employers understand the potential liability connected with this behavior.”
In one case, a company had to pay a $16 million settlement after one of its sales employees who was talking on a cell phone while driving was responsible for the death of an elderly person. “Unfortunately, there are still employers who fail to realize the urgency of the matter, because many believe that a salesperson on the road or the local delivery person can’t do his or her job fast enough unless they are multi-tasking,” says Long.
The use of personal music players on the job also puts workers and others at risk. Long says a worker listening to music through headphones may not hear a coworker shouting a warning, or the beeping sound of a reversing forklift. Companies need to realize that they are putting themselves at risk should a distracted employee become involved in an accident. Long says company human resources and safety directors must determine the ramifications of new technology in the workplace and ensure that:
- specific EE policy language be put into the employee handbook,
- EE workers are properly trained,
- and EE policies regarding use of electronic products are vigorously enforced.
Following those steps will help companies protect themselves from a liability standpoint by showing that an employee knowingly violated a written safety rule.
Read MoreCall Center Employees Suffering ‘Acoustic Shock’
Sawmills. Machine shops. Bottle recycling depots. Construction sites. These are all hotbeds for potential hearing damage. But here’s another one you might not have considered: call centers.
According to a new British report, two thirds of call centers in the United Kingdom fail to protect their workers from injuries and illnesses caused by acoustic shock – defined as any temporary or permanent disturbance in the functioning of the ear caused by a sudden sharp rise in volume.
Examples of such sounds include a loud fax tone or someone screaming or blowing a whistle over the telephone. Technology, including equipment that filters out high-pitched noise, is available to prevent acoustic shock, but few employers are using it.
Symptoms of acoustic shock include dizziness, a constant ringing in the ear(s), muffled hearing and hypersensitivity to other types of noise.
In recent years, at least 700 employees in the UK have reached out-of-court settlements with their employers for acoustic shock, with settlements totaling the equivalent of $5.7 million US ($6.5 million CAD). Some 900,000 people work in call centers across the UK.
Info to go: Read more about acoustic shock by clicking on the link at www.SafeSupervisor.com
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