Page 72 - OHS, June 2020

PPE: FALL PROTECTION
The Complexities of Achieving Comfort in Fall Protection Harnesses
A well-designed full body harness will disperse any remaining energy in a safe manner to the strong and durable areas of the body.
BY JASON GIEFER
68 Occupational Health & Safety | JUNE 2020
www.ohsonline.com
Today’s fall protection equipment user under- stands the need to use a full body harness and has since ditched the body belt in fall ar- rest scenarios, yet this worker seems to have an unquenchable thirst for comfort from their har- ness. That being said, fall protection is an ever-evolv- ing endeavor. The act of arresting the fall of a worker safely requires a connection device, such as a lanyard or self-retracting lifeline (SRL), to absorb as much of the energy developed in the fall as possible. A well- designed full body harness will disperse any remain- ing energy in a safe manner to the strong and durable areas of the body.
Harness manufactures have tried to keep these safety components intact while addressing comfort in many ways. Over time, there have been multi- tudes of changes, including adding padding, refin- ing the padding, adding stretch and pivot points, reducing the overall weight of the harness and ad- dressing the overall fit. These improvements, along with enhanced hardware, have resulted in a category of harness known as the “comfort harness.” Comfort harnesses have been around for more than 20 years. Harnesses have evolved from feedback of end users, and some of the complaints workers have about har- ness have been addressed.
However, although advancements in padding, buckles and flex points have been made to help comfort, complaints nevertheless persisted. The chafing type complaints subsided, but those of the sore shoulders, upper back and lower neck area continued. Parallel in timing, the industry was
seeing relatively light weight lanyards being re- placed by personal fall arrestors (miniature SRLs if you will).
This change meant workers went from very little weight suspended from their dorsal D-ring area with the use of a lanyard to an increase of two to eight pounds when using personal fall arrestor(s) suspend- ed between the shoulder blades at the dorsal D-ring. This increase from two to eight pounds may sound minimal, but several factors can make it problematic, including location of the weight, duration of the task and even the aging of the work force.
Evolution of Addressing Comfort Concerns
As mentioned earlier, initial attempts to increase comfort focused on adding padding, introducing flex/stretch, and improving buckles/hardware to ease adjustment and donning/doffing. One of the regular questions from customers searching for a more com- fortable harness was, “how much does this harness weigh?” or “what is your lightest harness?” Hearing these questions so frequently manufacturers realized that a comfort harness wasn’t addressing all the com- fort issues.
The difference in weight between two similarly equipped harnesses was rarely more than a pound. Trying to take one pound off the worker by lightening the harness equated to throwing a deck chair off the Titanic to keep it floating. Never mind the deck chair, patch the hole. This problem of lightening the load of the harness prompted safety managers, applica- tion engineers and others to encourage the worker to source the best fitting harness possible—not just with size but also adjusting it to ensure the respective parts of the harness were in their proper locations. This helped ensure the padding would best suit the user and that the sub-pelvic strap was located properly to support the worker in the event of a fall arrest event. Also, optimal dorsal D-ring placement would ensure optimal arrest and make connecting easier.
Focusing on proper adjustment and sizing was definitely a step in the right direction towards com- fort, but workers wearing personal SRLs still had complaints, especially about the ergonomic variety in the upper back/neck, shoulder region. Fall protection manufactures had made these SRLs about as light as possible. Now what? What else could be done?