16 Jun Fall Protection Safety

At Creation World Safety, our number one priority is the safety of our customers. As premier providers of employer and employee safety training courses, we’re proud to help businesses throughout the Los Angeles area improve employee safety. We strive to provide clear, concise, and effective instruction at every turn.

Our team offers a wide variety of safety training courses ranging from fire safety and confined space training to advanced hazmat safety training. However, while topics like hazmat safety and fire safety are important, we also have classes to prevent against the most common workplace dangers, for example—falling.

The most common workplace injuries are the result of falls. So if you have employees that work in any environment where they are exposed to the danger of falling, understanding the basics of fall protection safety is critical.

When Does an Employer Need to Provide Fall Protection?

The Occupational Safety and Health Organization, commonly known as OSHA, lays out explicit guidelines for when and how businesses need to protect employees from falls. Employers should provide protection anytime there’s a reasonable danger of an employee falling, but OSHA has specific rules for fall protection in several industries:

General Industry Workplaces: In these areas, which can include locations like factories or warehouses, employees need fall protection anytime they’re exposed to heights greater than 4 feet.

Shipyards: For shipyards, employees need fall protection when exposed to heights greater than 5 feet.

Construction: In the construction industry, employees need fall protection when exposed to heights over 6 feet.

Longshoring Operations: Meanwhile in longshore environments, which generally deal with handling cargo and storage containers from ships and large vessels, employees need fall protection when exposed to heights over 8 feet.

Outside of these specific height guidelines, employers are mandated to provide protection anytime there’s a potential for falls to occur. This means employers need to use floor hole covers, railings, and/or toe-boards anytime there’s a hole in the floor, provide railings and toe-boards on elevated platforms or stairs with open sides, and provide fall protection whenever employees are working over dangerous machinery, regardless of the fall distance.

Employers are also required to keep floors as clean and dry as possible, provide any necessary training equipment to employees free of cost, and train employees on fall safety precautions using a language they can understand.

Tools for Fall Safety

There are a variety of ways to protect employees from falls, and each situation will call for a different technique. Here are a few of the most common tools for workplace fall protection:

Guardrails: These are used to provide protection from falling off an open ledge or into a hole. OSHA guidelines dictate that guardrails need to be at least 42 inches high and include a top rail, a mid rail, and posts.

Toe-Boards: Toe-boards prevent workers’ feet from slipping off a ledge. They are generally required anytime a guardrail is required. Toe-boards should be securely fastened in place, at least 4 inches high, and allow no more than a 1/4″ of space between the bottom edge of the toe-board and the floor.

Chest & Full-Body Harnesses: Harnesses, or personal fall arrest systems, are another option for securing employees and are common at construction sites. A personal fall arrest system keeps an employee suspended in the event of a fall, preventing danger when guardrails aren’t practical. It’s important to thoroughly train employees on how to use personal fall arrest systems to ensure the system works as intended.

Safety Nets: Another common device at construction sites, safety nets may be placed up to 25 feet below the site of the ledge or fall danger. In addition to protecting employees who might experience a fall, safety nets also catch tools or debris, protecting the area around the worksite, and the people below.

Sign up for Employee Safety Training Courses in Los Angeles, CA

These guidelines are important, but they’re only the beginning of true workplace safety. If you want to keep your employees as safe as possible, professional employee safety training courses are the best way to do it. Call Creation World Safety today at (310) 538-1297 or reach out to us through our contact page to find out how we can help improve your employees’ safety, ensure your compliance with all OSHA standards, and make your work environment a safer, more productive place.