490Remaining Safe at Height
posted on June 9th, 2009
Just how far down do you need to fall to do yourself a serious injury? Just two metres. It’s easy to feel assured when your self-assurance is riding high as you cut branches off the tree in your garden and have much experience of heights in high areas. Even so, even the most assured, experienced roofer or tree surgeon has succumbed to serious injury or death while working at height. Why? Because if something happens, you have absolutely no chance to respond. Once in the grip of gravity, you have no chance to rectify the error.
So it’s utterly vital you protect yourself from falls when working off the ground by utilising height safety equipment. It doesn’t matter if you’re only trimming a few limbs from a tree in your garden, fall arrest equipment is obligatory.
So what type of safety equipment should you use? Well, depending on the chore you need to carry out, you could be thinking about one in this list: Pole straps, Harnesses (including full body harness and sit harness), Slings, Lanyards, Kits, Karabiners, Pulleys, Static line rope and rope protection, and rope grabs and connectors.
If you work at height professionally, such as forestry, quarries ,docks and ports, or construction engineering - you really ought to already have been schooled in working safely at heights and be au fait with safety equipment. Otherwise, you are putting yourself at a huge risk of a mishap.
