Back to Basics is a weekly feature that highlights important but possibly overlooked information that any EHS professional should know. This week, we examine construction safety and health.
Building involves various tasks and projects performed by laborers representing multiple trades using all kinds of tools and equipment. That variety of work comes with various health and safety hazards that must be controlled at a construction worksite.
The construction industry is covered by worker safety and health standards under Title 29, Part 1926.
Occupational safety and health researchers have worked to identify all the work hazards at construction sites and offer employers methods and equipment for controlling those hazards.
A team of researchers recently used a risk assessment framework to examine patterns of construction accidents in the report “Unraveling the evolutionary patterns of construction accidents: a risk assessment framework based on average mutual information theory,” published April 18 in Scientific Reports, a Nature Portfolio journal.
The researchers found that fatal psychological and physiological factors in construction accidents often included “illegal operations,” “illegal commands,” and “command errors.” The top management factors in construction accidents were “inadequate occupational safety and health management structure and staffing,” an “incomplete or unimplemented system of accident and hazard investigation and management,” and an “inadequate or unimplemented occupational health management system.”
The report’s authors recommended that construction employers properly delegate safety responsibilities, educate employees on safety procedures, and develop emergency plans.
Detailed recommendations included the following:
- Improving safety and health management by allocating safety management personnel, standardizing safety managers’ responsibilities, providing employees with occupational health protection and suitable personal protective equipment (PPE), and actively improving working conditions;
- Strengthening safety and health management through regular safety inspections to uncover potential safety hazards and informing relevant departments of the findings of any inspections; and
- Regularly revising the company’s occupational safety and health management system.
Focus Four hazards
For years, safety groups, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) have alerted employers to the risks posed by the “Focus Four” or “Fatal Four” safety hazards—caught-in/-between, electrocution, falls, and struck-by hazards. Several years ago, the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) called attention to occupational health hazards in construction, another “Focus Four” that includes manual materials handling, occupational noise, air contaminants, and high temperatures.
The AIHA suggested that employers remember the “W-H-A-T PACE” acronym for the factors in materials-handling hazards, which include:
- Weight: The heavier the object, the higher the risk of overexertion.
- Handling ease: Loads with contents likely to move, loads that can’t be carried close to the body, or loads without handles all increase risks of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs).
- Awkward postures, such as bending, kneeling, reaching, stooping, and twisting, increase risk.
- Time/distance: Loads that must be carried a greater distance or for a longer time are higher risk.
- PACE: The number of loads that must be moved per shift.
A job safety analysis can help you develop rules and worksite procedures for controlling materials-handling hazards. You might establish a worksite rule that no employee should lift materials heavier than 50 pounds. Just remember to train employees on proper procedures for materials handling.
The most common control method for noise exposure is PPE like earmuffs or earplugs. However, the AIHA suggests substituting less noisy tools or using sound-absorbing materials to limit noise at the source. PPE only protects the wearer. You should offer hearing awareness training that covers nonoccupational exposures, like attending auto races or music concerts, motorcycle riding, and shooting firearms.
Air contaminants at building sites may include highly toxic materials. Manufacturers’ safety data sheets (SDSs) can provide information about a substance’s hazards and recommended control measures. Risks from air contaminants vary depending on the amounts used, confined spaces, exposure duration, and equipment dispersing particles.
If available, you might consider using less toxic products. Engineering controls for air contaminants include local exhaust ventilation and wet methods. When substitution and engineering controls are impractical or insufficient, you can provide respiratory protection.
Information about high temperatures is readily available from the radio, television, and Internet. Some weather forecasts include a heat index that predicts the combined effects of temperature and humidity.
Control measures can include using power-assist tools that lower exertion levels, rest breaks in shaded areas, and water for hydration. The AIHA stressed the importance of closely monitoring worker acclimatization, including a table of recommended exertion levels for new and returning workers.
Several western states—California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington—include acclimatization protocols in their heat illness prevention standards. Heat hazard control methods in the state rules also include providing water, shade, and rest breaks.
Construction’s ‘Fatal Four’ safety hazards
The construction industry’s “Focus Four” or “Fatal Four” safety hazards are caught-in or -between, electrocution, fall, and struck-by hazards. Falls are probably the most serious, and OSHA’s construction industry fall protection standard has remained its most cited rule for 14 years.
The National Safety Council (NSC) has also worked to address falls from heights through its “Work to Zero” initiative. Researchers looked at hazardous workplace situations that most often lead to fatalities to identify contributing risk factors and technologies that environment, health, and safety (EHS) professionals might be able to use to address hazardous situations.
The group produced “Safety Technology 2020: Mapping Technology Solutions for Reducing Serious Injuries and Fatalities in the Workplace,” a report that examined 18 hazardous situations in which workers are most likely to die and provided five to eight potential technology solutions for each situation.
In addition to working at heights, the report looked at cleaning, confined space entry, construction and installation, electrical work, emergency response, excavation, heavy equipment operation, hot work (such as welding), inspections (or checking), loading and unloading, logging equipment operation, machinery operation, process safety operations, repair and maintenance, tending a retail establishment, vehicle-pedestrian interactions, and workplace violence.
Researchers found the most promising technology solutions for working at heights were:
- Mobile anchor points that can allow workers to attach fall arrest systems to a roof with weighted anchors and do not require penetration of the structure;
- Aerial lifts and platforms that can give workers greater stability and flexibility in their movements without having to traverse a structure;
- Self-retracting lines that can be connected to anchors and automatically stop a fall to reduce injuries caused by dangerous amounts of slack in a lifeline when abrupt falls do occur;
- In some instances, such as inspections of materials and structures, unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) that can reduce the risk of falls by removing workers from heights altogether; and
- Wearable sensors that can monitor worker fatigue and alert supervisors and coworkers to a downed worker.
The NSC has also looked at wearable sensors’ potential to protect workers from struck-by hazards.
In 2023, OSHA launched a National Emphasis Program (NEP) for outreach and enforcement regarding falls from heights across all industries.
OSHA sponsors an annual National Safety Stand-Down to Prevent Falls in Construction with its partners at the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP), National Safety Council, Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR), and National Construction Safety Executives. The agency offers employers resources in multiple languages for conducting safety stand-downs, including training guides and fact sheets, ladder safety and scaffolding guidance, fall safety videos, hard hat stickers, and hazard alert cards. Recommended stand-down activities include fall safety toolbox talks, safety equipment inspections, and rescue-planning exercises.
Caught-in or -between hazards differ from struck-by hazards. A struck-by injury is caused by the impact of an object or equipment. Caught-in or -between accidents most often result in crushing injuries and can include being buried in a trench collapse, pinned between a vehicle and a structure, or caught in moving machine parts.
Caught-in or -between hazards include excavation or trench cave-ins and scaffold collapses; becoming pinned between equipment and a solid object, such as a wall or another piece of equipment; and unguarded equipment or machine parts, including power tool parts.
Electrical hazards include arc blasts or flashes, burns, electrocution, explosions, fires, and electrical shock as a live current passes through the body. Workers face electrocution hazards from contact with overhead power lines, damaged or live wires, and faulty extension cords.
Construction workers may be struck by a falling, flying, rolling, or swinging object. They may also be struck by worksite motor vehicles and heavy equipment like cranes and excavators.
The Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR), a labor union-supported research organization, looked at wearable technology’s potential to alert construction workers to nearby vehicles or equipment, preventing caught-between and struck-by injuries. They tested a prototype belt with vibrating motors to alert wearers to the presence of vehicles and equipment. Testers wore a waist belt embedded with a series of vibrating motors. The motors received signals from a hazard alert system running on a laptop or mobile devices to monitor equipment and vehicles at a site.
However, testers found they had approximately 95% accuracy in identifying signals from individual motors when motors were spaced 2.5 inches apart. They also found it was more difficult to identify signals from motors on a waist belt when they were arranged vertically rather than horizontally. Signal parameters used to relay information to wearers included signal intensity, duration, and delay.
Researchers have also examined monitors’ potential to collect worker data in outdoor environments and warn them of heat stress risks, as well as wearable carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, and gas leak detectors.
Some of the Focus Four safety hazards can result in costly injuries. Falls to a lower level costs employers $5.68 billion a year in lost wage costs and medical expenses, according to insurer Liberty Mutual. “Struck by an object or equipment” costs employers $5.55 billion annually, and being caught in or compressed by equipment or objects costs employers $2.05 billion annually.
Some construction site hazards, like falls, heat, and trench collapses, can be fatal. Some like overexertion while moving worksite materials can be painful and debilitating. Worldwide, back pain is responsible for more years lived with a disability than any other condition. Nearly all can result in costly workers’ compensation claims that, in turn, affect your company’s “experience modification factor” or “experience modification rate,” which is used to set your company’s insurance premiums.
Be mindful of both the safety (caught-in/-between, electrocution, falls, and struck-by) and the health “Focus Four” hazards (air contaminants, high temperatures, manual materials handling, and occupational noise) and the appropriate worksite controls.