Protecting Workers During National Safety Month
Understanding head, face and eye hazards and their solutions will help keep workers stay safe this June — and all year long.
- By David Cavallaro
- Jun 01, 2023
June marks the beginning of National Safety Month, which focuses on raising public awareness of the leading safety and health risks for workers and aims to decrease the number of injuries and fatalities in workplaces. While safety is important year-round, observances such as National Safety Month are paramount to raising awareness about safety and health hazards and creating an environment where workers and organizations can put safety first.
A safety-first workplace environment focuses on eliminating the leading causes of preventable injuries and deaths. By creating awareness of the risks and hazards and educating workers to conduct tasks safely, solutions can be made to help eliminate on-site risks.
In safety plans, PPE should be considered the last line of defense against injury. But while it is viewed as the last line of defense, it is still crucial to have head-to-toe PPE. Indeed, head-to-toe protection starts at the top. This National Safety Month, let’s review the head, face and eye protection needed when it comes to staying protected on the job.
Head Safety
Summer is here, which means construction season is in full swing. Common workplace risks for construction workers include exposure to dropped objects and impacts and bumps to the head on equipment and machinery. Ensuring proper head protection is a necessary component in helping to keep workers safe.
However, with the warmer weather during summer months, wearing a hard hat for long periods of time in the heat can really take a toll on health and safety. Constant sun exposure is an under recognized health hazard that many construction workers and workers in other outdoor related industries face. Assessing the heat risks on the job is vital for workers. If the body is not able to regulate the internal temperature fast enough, this can lead to heat-related illnesses such as heat exhaustion or heat stroke.
When selecting head protection for outdoor construction workers who may be more susceptible to heat stress, employers should supply light-colored hard hats for their employees to help protect from heat hazards. Lighter colored hard hats, such as those that are white, help keep workers cool by reflecting light from the sun away from the head. High-visibility colors on the other hand, such as orange, can attract and retain heat. Research indicates that when working in a 90-degree-Fahrenheit setting, white hard hats provided the coolest temperature around a worker’s head, while orange hard hats or high-visibility yellow resulted in the highest temperatures. There was over a 10-degree-Fahrenheit gap in temperature between the two colors which could make or break a day of work in the heat of the summer.
This article originally appeared in the June 1, 2023 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.