Page 68 - OHS, July/August 2022

FACILITY SAFETY
Assessing Elevated Surfaces for Slip,Trip and Fall Risks
The responsibility to ensure a safe work environment lies with company management.
SBY WILLIAM DAVIDSON
lips, trips, and falls are, unfortunately, quite common. According to the National Safety Council, in 2020, more than 800 workers died from falls and more than 210,000
1 were injured so badly they had to miss work.
While falls on the same level are often quite serious, falling from an elevated surface, such as stairs or a platform, only increases the risk of traumatic injury. This can be a serious problem in industrial and manufacturing plants, which often contain catwalks, crossovers, ladders, mezzanines and other elevated structures. Age also plays a role in the frequency and severity of injury. The severity of an injury increases as a person ages. With an ageing workforce this is becoming a much greater concern.
According to Liberty Mutual’s most recent Workplace Safety Index, falls to a lower-level cost $6.2 billion in 2018. There are many factors that increase fall risk, such as a lack of warning signage, inadequate footwear and poor training. However, according to the National Floor Safety Institute (NFSI), a problematic walking surface is the most impactful factor leading to 55 percent of slips, trips and falls.
The manufacturing type can also increase danger. Workers in food processing, for example, must contend with water, grease and animal fats, all of which can make walking surfaces slippery and challenging.
Ultimately, the responsibility to ensure a safe work environment lies with company management. To fully understand the safety profile of a facility managers can:
■ Begin a rigorous safety audit to identify dangers
■ Learn about the many available options to mitigate slip, trip and fall risks
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■ Adopt common sense approaches, like making sure warning signage points both ways on a set of stairs.
■ Install walking and climbing surfaces that protect workers, whether the area is high-traffic, wet, dry, indoors or outdoors.
Adhering to the Highest Safety Standards
Many organizations rely on guidance from OSHA to ensure worker safety. While OSHA safety standards to prevent slips, trips and falls are a great starting point, they should not be considered the last word.
OSHA guidelines are designed to inform safety measures in numerous industries, which can potentially undercut the specific risks in food processing, chemical, wet manufacturing environments and other service industries. Not all workplaces are created equal, and some workers must regularly contend with wet or greasy surfaces that increase their risk of falling.
These environmental conditions play a major role in whether a flooring, platform or stair tread is safe or not. Consider the difference between driving on a dry road or an icy one. The same is true of surfaces in manufacturing and industrial plants.
For example, OSHA guidelines say that ladders must have textured surfaces to make them slip and fall resistant. Rebar qualifies under these rules and is inexpensive and readily available. Under dry conditions, a rebar ladder might be a safe solution. However, in many industrial environments, ladders are rarely dry, and wet rebar can create a serious fall hazard.
The same is true of diamond plate, which is ubiquitous and a reasonably slip-resistant walking surface—when it’s dry. But again, when it is wet, diamond plate becomes quite slippery.
This is where planning comes in. By thoroughly inspecting a
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