Posts Tagged ‘harness’

Sydney Scaffold Collapse

Monday, March 16th, 2009

Saw a post on Kevin Jone’s SafetAtWork blog (see my blog roll) on an accident involving a scaffold collapse. 

The accident is reported in this website. Note that there had been a scaffold incident just weeks before this accident.

The victim did not put on his harness, the other painter that did survived. Based on the report, it seems like a scaffold connection failed… fall arrest system harnesses is a last line of the defence that should never be neglected.

Apparrently the painter that survived was hanging on the harness for about 45 minutes, luckily he was able to stand on a window ledge, if not suspension trauma could have set in.

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Posted in Fall Protection, Incidents, Industry, Safety Technology/Hazard, construction | No Comments »

Are our harnesses designed for heavier workers?

Friday, June 20th, 2008

Do you know that most harnesses are designed based on a 100kg or 220 pounds weight/manikin? If you have particularly heavier workers (say >140kg) do you know that they might not be protected by your usual fall protection equipment?

There could also be concerns for workers significantly lighter than 100kg, as the fall arrest force maintained in fall arrestors might be too high for them.

Who says fall protection PPEs are straightforward?

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Posted in Fall Protection, Safety Technology/Hazard | No Comments »

Suspension Trauma Syndrome

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

Suspension trauma syndrome is thrust into the limelight as a result of a HSE publication in 2000. The HSE publication was initiated after a 1999 incident in Australia where “a rescuee on a training exercise took his full body weight on a harness, he felt “excruciating pain”, became nauseated and unable to react or communicate with he rescuer.”
However, 8 years on and there are still much unclarity on how to deal with suspension trauma syndrome and there are numerous variations to the name used. Here are some variations to the name: “harness induced pathology”, “orthothatic shock while suspended”, “orthostatic intolerance”, “harness hang syndrome”. One of the reasons for the variations is that even if no trauma is involved persons being suspended in vertical position might still suffer the syndrome.

In terms of immediate respons, some recommend that the patients that were suspended for more than 30 minutes should be kept in a seated position for a period of time, but others do not think that this is necessary. Hopefully the medical people come to a consensus on this soon.

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Posted in Fall Protection, Safety Technology/Hazard | 1 Comment »

Guidance note on flying fox

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

See my earlier post on adventure activities in work setting. Here’s a guidance note for flying fox, another type of adventure activity.

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Posted in Fall Protection, Incidents, Safety Technology/Hazard | No Comments »