Safety First

Let’s be careful out there.

That would be the bottom line of the National Demolition Association’s 11^th Annual Safety Summit, held in late October near Chicago. Nearly 100 people participated in the two-day sessions that focused on increasing safe practices and improving safety programs in the demolition industry. In addition, a lot of discussion revolved around dealing with the federal Occupation Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), which oversees virtually all workplaces.

The summit’s speakers were primarily safety experts who shared their views on how to avoid injuries. For example, in accident investigations, accident report forms are the “most pathetic” parts of any safety program, according to Gary Glader, Network Safety Consultants, Orland Park, Ill. There often is not enough information in those reports in order to learn from the mistakes so they aren’t repeated.

Writing in “employee acting unsafe” as the cause of the accident is not worth anything, he remarked. Ditto writing in that unsafe conditions or unsafe actions did not contribute to the accident. “Then what was the cause?” Glader asks, “That God decided the employee was going to be injured that day?” The goal of an accident investigation should be fact finding, not fault finding, he added.

Employer liability was the subject of the discussion of Mark Lies II, of the law firm Seyfarth Shaw, Chicago. Many times an accident on the job is caused by an employee performing an action that was against company policy and regulation, and could not have been foreseen by the employer, so the employer is not liable. Lies, an attorney, added, “Just because an accident happened doesn’t mean there was an OSHA violation or that there should be a jury award.”

Training adults is one of the most difficult tasks in the world, says Ron Snyder, Kirkwood Community College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, alluding to the old adage about teaching an old dog new tricks. There are three basic types of teaching approaches, he says—visual, or watching it being done; auditory, which is listening about how to do something; and, tactile, or hands on. The latter is the best for knowledge retention.

He adds that the grading procedure is different for training adults, because the stakes can be higher. For example, in school, 70 percent is a passing grade. “Now 70 percent may be good enough to pass in school, but when using respiratory equipment, is 70 percent correct good enough?” That is a matter of life and death, he says.

Jay Jacobs of Consumers Energy, Jackson, Mich., urged attendees to pay attention to the personal protective equipment (PPEs), such as respirators, that they use. He sprinkled his talk with some simple if blunt statements (“People who don’t follow safety rules will be killed.”) as well as graphic demonstrations of the value of hard hats, proper work gloves and other PPEs.

He says that if an employee says he or she doesn’t like to wear safety glasses because they slide down the nose, then buy them a strap for the back. If they say the hard hat won’t stay on in the wind, get them a chin strap. And if they insist on wearing a hard hat backward, which takes away all the effectiveness of the visor in keeping the facial structure safer from falling objects, then buy the hard hat model that is brimmed all around it.

Some other tips from Jacobs: Have workers wear denim or other natural fiber clothes, as polyester and its derivatives all catch fire too easily; 60 percent of eye accidents occur when the victim was wearing glasses without side shields; Kevlar liners for work gloves protect well against sharp object cutting the hands, but can shrink when heated. Indeed, he says, using the proper glove for the task at hand is very important for safety.

Silica regulations, including the history of the regulations and what will happen with these regulations in the future, was covered by John Dimos, a certified industrial hygienist. Diane Turek, a 27-year employee of OSHA, gave an overview of policies being formulated at the federal agency.

The second day of the event began with a presentation from Byron Atkins, who investigates accidents, especially fatal ones, for Sunbelt Rentals Inc., an equipment rental chain based in Charlotte, N.C.

He focused on man lift and forklift safety, and provided many tips on how to avoid trouble with this common equipment. Transitions, whereby the worker is either getting in or out of the bucket, are where a majority of accidents occur on man lift devices.

That workers should be wearing and using their safety harnesses is obvious. Even if employees have their harnesses on and have been hooked up, they could disconnect them to move, which is when accidents often happen, Atkins says. Also, boom lifts should not be operated when winds are more than 22 mph, and the ground must be sturdy enough to support the boom when it is traveling over it. Man baskets either modified or completely built by an outside party from the original manufacturer, even if it is the current owner of the machine, must be certified by a professional engineer or the OEM, or the employer could be liable in an accident.

Also increasing liability is if the control panel cannot be read because it is worn out or been painted over (new control panel decals run under $100, he says), and if the operator’s manual is not with the machine. The first thing OSHA will ask for at the start of an accident investigation is where the manual is, in order to familiarize themselves with the equipment and to make sure the employee had access to that information.

Deborah Kopsik of the U.S. EPA, talked about the agency’s program to regain control of the many radioactive devices that are in industrial buildings, especially those about to be torn down. The devices include those used for precise measurements in production lines and certain fire exit signs, and they can get into the scrap metal stream. If a device with its radioactive source is melted at a steel mill, this can contaminate the entire mill and its products. That is why EPA is concentrating on trying to find the radioactive materials before they reach the scrap yard. As long as the demolition contractor handles the devices properly in the field, there is no danger to any workers or the surrounding area, she says.

Many in the demolition industry say that OSHA inspectors don’t understand the business. One way OSHA is learning to understand demolition practices and safety needs is with a training program being provided to OSHA inspectors. Christine Pettiti of the OSHA Training Institute says the agency’s new program on the demolition industry will show the inspectors several concepts on demolition, including how voids are filled when a building comes down, and what is the difference between a regular demolition project and a disaster site. At the latter, the structure is damaged and may not be as predictable in its collapse as a planned demolition program.

The next National Demolition Association Safety Summit will be held in the fall of 2005 in Baltimore.