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Pipe racks and other restricted works paces.
ReplyDeleteThe Petzl Vertex helmet not only is suitable for cave exploring and tower climbing its also a good alternative for confined space entries and rescue ops. This particular helmet also provide electrical protection. Strongly recommended for those who practice sports and rescue ops because you only will need one helmet that fit both activities instead of having one for the working and another for joy! Julio Rios, Stericycle
ReplyDeleteCurtis, a client had one of his employees fall from a height of about 12' while descending a ladder. The employee was wearing one of these helmets as well! If he had been wearing a typical hard hat, it would have fallen off during the fall. The employee struck his head and received a slight concussion, but was able to walk away! It was the opinion of all, that if had not been wearing this helmet, he could have been seriously hurt or worse! Oh, OSHA stopped by and cited the employer for not wearing the typical hard hat! Go figure!
ReplyDeleteHi Curtis,
ReplyDeleteI was smiling when I read your post, because our confined space rescue team uses Petzl helmets like the ones you identified. After a recent training exercise, an employee who had observed the exercise approached me and told me he was concerned that we were not using proper head protection. I took the opportunity to educate him on what to look for. As safety professionals, it is not only our responsibility to keep on top of the latest technology and trends, but to make sure others in our organization are aware of them as well.
John Kingsford-Smith / Occupational Health & Safety Professional at Western Washington University
John. Thank you for sharing your experience. Hopefully word will get out better about these helmets, it seems they might be better at preventing certain type injuries than some of the traditional hard hats do. Stay in touch.
DeleteI also smiled when I read this. I did rope rescue training one day and was supplied with Petzl helmet and harness. You can imaging the discussion this caused. Especially when the harnesses we were given didn't display an Australian Standards tag. Needless to say, alternate harnesses were sought for the duration of the training until the issue was sorted. - Susan McLachlan
DeleteGreat article I am replacing my normal hard hat with Petzl helmet personal choice, hard hats fall off my head. Especially when we are doing sewar main inspections. I had one fall off my head and hit one poor guy in his head fortunately he was wearing his hard hat. :-)
DeleteInteresting idea on these re-purposed helmets. Obviously the chin-strap device keeps them from falling off as well. This reminds me of pictures seen from Japanese construction sites where I've seen all workers with chin straps on their helmets. Due to the chin-strap feature these would be useful to anyone working in windy conditions. I think of applications where I've been roofing construction, stack construction/maintenance, slip-form tower construction, etc. I also remember a project where a carpenter fell backwards off a scaffold (during construction of the scaffold so guardrails not complete) from a 9-foot height onto a concrete deck. As he fell his hardhat came off and he hit his head and died. Something like this may have saved his life.
ReplyDeleteIt is the responsibility of the manager to see that the worker should have proper safety tools and must get safety training to avoid any type of mishap in the workplace. Workers should also follow the safety rules of work.
ReplyDeleteRegard
Your comment: "I am amazed how ingenious people are when it comes to creating, modifying, or repurposing something so it can be used for worker protection" guides my attention to the advancement of safety eyeglasses.
ReplyDeleteI was around when they became very required PPE, (70's).
We were working offshore production platforms and unlike everyone onshore we had escaped their 'continual' use for sometime. When we finally put the ugly heavy black framed glasses on and kept them on, we were slipping on stairs, walking into flowlines and pipelines, etc. it was a comedy of errors. They caused a slight tunnel vision, headaches, soreness in back of the ears.
Respiratory protection filters and masks also. Just phenomenal.
Kyle
We should not take risks when it comes to safety, he is lucky that the helmet he is using is approved for OSHA head protection guidelines. But that's not always the case, sometimes there are workers who chose to take the risks because nothing bad is happening, that's a manner that shouldn't be tolerated, specially when it comes to safety. Complying for the standards is still the best way to avoid accidents.
ReplyDeleteHard hats are intended to provide some protection from falling items from above, but not really ideal protection when the worker falls from height. If I am construction company owner, I would make workers working 4 feet or higher, wear motorcycle helmets. That is better than OSHA standards, which is a bare minimum and does not really address a full extent of the risks of the workers.
ReplyDeletePetzl Brand is UIAA standardized.
ReplyDeleteIn Australia we have have alot of international riggers come thru for stage builds. Their equipment is not Australian Standardized.
My Risk Manager stated that the UIAA supersedes AS so it's OK.
Can anyone please help me out with any input.?
Thank you
We have personnel in the field on a daily basis in UTVs. Our operational area is in a very hot desert environment. Our personnel are required to wear helmets that meet ASTM standards. We have them but are looking for something that meets safety requirements but is lighter and cooler than what we have now. Can these Petzl helmets be used for this application?
ReplyDeleteJust look in the manufacturer's info / spec's to see if the helmet meets the ASTM standard you referenced
ReplyDeleteI believe more people should look into the rock-climbing style of head protection. I work for an environmental company, and the majority of my job consists of entering confined spaces (fuel and oil tanks and trucks) for cleaning. For various reasons, between tight entry holes, piping and other objects constricting the available space, and the basic design of hardhats, they simply don't stay on my head. There are days I spend more time fishing a hardhat out of the muck than I do working with it on my head. Just leaning over and tilting my head in any direction is often enough to get a hardhat to fall off, meaning I have to tighten it to painful levels just to get it to stay on my head longer. Then there is the visibility hindrance caused by the wide brims (whose only functional purpose seems to be sticking out just far enough to hit something near my head so it will fall off), made worse by the fact that I need to wear prescription glasses. The problems compound during the winter, with below-freezing temperatures meaning I need to wear hoods and hats and facemasks. Wear any of them under the hardhat, and it doesn't fit on my head at all. Neither do any hoods comfortably or securely fit over a hardhat.
ReplyDeleteThe complaints I have about hardhats go on, and I'm sure I'm not the only worker with these complaints. I think everyone in the working industries should look into the values of other types of head protection - from what I have seen and experienced, people wear hardhats just because we have to, and rarely when not under supervision, because they cause more problems than they are there to stop.
I work for the U.S. Forest Service fighting wildfires as a prt of an elite Hotshot crew. We still wear horrenous old achool hardhats that severly limit our ability to look up. Looking up on a wildfire in the timber is a critical imperarive as trees are often burning dozens of feet up and may fall on you while you’re trying to cut them down or merely passing by. I prefer to wear a Petzl in the woods but have often caught ahit for it but, I’ve done my homework and have a vested interest in going hole at night instead of relying on some 15yo bureaucratic manual telling me what the best PPE is.
ReplyDeleteI work as a pyrotechnician for a New-England based fireworks display company. Standard hard hats are inadequate, in my opinion, for modern pyrotechnic operations. When hand-timing an electrically fired show, one must remain at the firing panel, pushing switches, while looking up at the display. Normal PPE hats make this difficult. We work at night, so attaching headlamps to standard hard hats is difficult, and they are often duct-taped to the helmet. Lastly, should one be working a hand-fired display, the possibility of lateral impact is greater should a rack or mortar fail. Standard hard hats are not designed for lateral impact. The new Petzl hats are a vast improvement.
ReplyDelete