Posts Tagged ‘work at height’

Accident Alert from Singapore

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

The latest accident alerts from Singapore had been improving in its usefulness. The case studies are relatively prompt and have pictures to help readers understand the cases better.  The most recent alert can be found here.

Some possible improvements include providing a set of indexes on the case (like what Chemical Safety Board does for its accident reports) to facilitate classification of the lessons learned. A database should be developed to allow public to search for past cases. Perhaps a forum can be created to allow safety professionals to discuss the cases to derive other useful lessons.

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.

FPMA – Technical guidance on twin lanyard

Friday, February 1st, 2008

Fall Protection Manufacturer Association has a guidance note on safe use of twin lanyard. Click here.

Related to my earlier post.