Fall injuries remain stubbornly high

Employers continue to struggle with fall prevention measures nearly three years after federal regulators updated workplace safety rules in an effort to reduce fall-related fatalities.

Fall protection has remained the most cited violation by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 2010, and with falls killing more workers than ever in recent years, employers should place a renewed focus on reevaluating and managing the risk, experts say.

“I think the rule change has the potential to make an impact (on injuries and workers compensation claims), but I’m not sure if we’re seeing it yet,” said Trever Neuroth, attorney in the Reston, Virginia, office of Jackson Lewis P.C., who represents employers on OSHA compliance.

Established in 1971, fall prevention and protection regulations were revamped in late 2016, requiring employers to assess their worksites for fall hazards and to have documentation of compliance, among other changes.

Despite the updates, workplace fatalities from falls reached an all-time high of 887 in 2017 from a low of 651 in 1995, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“I think (employers) are still getting the updates to their facilities into their budgetary cycles,” said Thomas E. Kramer, managing principal of LJB Inc., a firm that provides engineering safety consulting out of its Miamisburg, Ohio, office.

“Plus, for roof fall hazards, the most economical time to address these issues is during a reroofing, so this may take a generation of roofs, 10 to 20 years, before we see significant changes,” he said.

The standards change was “meant to improve employers’ consistency between their operations, whether or not they are a fixed facility, construction site or combination of both,” said Steve Martino, Mission Viejo, California-based senior loss control consultant for AmTrust Financial Services Inc.

One of the main changes is that work site assessment requirements now apply to fall protection, said Mr. Kramer. The “intent is for proactive hazard identification” as well as giving employers a chance to fix a growing problem.

The change helped bring awareness to fall hazards that may have been overlooked, such as skylights and single-story roofs, which aren’t always recognized as a fall hazard despite exceeding fall hazard height limits under OSHA standards, Mr. Martino said.

Improvements have also been made in the erection and maintenance of scaffolding and employers’ recognition of its importance during construction, he said.

Loading docks higher than 48 inches from the ground are another fall hazard that the new standards helped employers recognize and mitigate, said Mr. Neuroth.

Fall protection gear is readily available in the marketplace, but the industry leans too heavily on personal protective gear and not enough on other strategies, such as installing guardrails, said Mr. Kramer.

“It’s easy to buy some lanyards and harnesses and think everyone is safe,” he wrote in an email. “However, the stats … tell a different story. This is obviously a complex situation with lots of failure modes and issues that contribute, which is why we need better processes in all of these areas.”

One strategy is to create a targeted list of issues that need to be addressed, Mr. Kramer said.

“A common approach is reactionary; you walk through your facility and you have this scattered approach,” discovering a multitude of problems, he said. “We try to say, think of it as strategic. Let’s have a risk management approach. OSHA realizes you can’t address every hazard overnight. You need to have some process in place.”

Training is also key, said Mr. Martino, noting that 80% of accidents are primarily related to some inattention or carelessness on behalf of a worker.

“You can do as much as you want to protect the employee, but people are still going to jump off the last rung of a ladder or not pay attention to whether or not they’re too high and need some type of fall protection,” he said. “It’s just one of those things that we have to really continue to reinforce with employees, that it’s very important to their health and well-being, and they need to be diligent themselves.”

Companies should also look at the costs of prevention, according to Mr. Martino.

“One accident for a $25,000 premium is going to cost (an employer) probably $75,000 to $100,000 to their business” as well as the cost of treatment for the employee, the impact on future premiums and their insurability in the future, he said. “Employers need to understand the impact to the bottom line … (and) realize what it takes to manage workers comp exposures. Their greatest asset is the people who work for them.”