ATSSA Signal September October 2020

American Traffic Safety Services Association 18 Innovation Sales Solutions Inc., specializes in traf - fic safety, fall protection, and personal protective equipment. He serves as president of the Virginia ATSSA Chapter and on the board of several construction safety organiza - tions, giving him an understanding of the needs of diversework environments. Stallings said thehardhats that dominate constructionsites todayhaven’t advanced much—aside from a slight upgrade to their nylon suspension system—since they were first designed a century ago. “It’s essentially the same hard hat that we built in 1919,” he said. “Its overall purpose was really not true head protec - tion. It was designed for dropped objects protection.” The hard hats constructionworkerswear today are approved under the American National Standards Institute’s (ANSI’s) Z89.1-2014 guidance for industrial head protection. This guidance establishes requirements for helmets designed to offer protection from lateral impact or top-only impact. That overlooks a major source of seri - ous injuries for construction workers and people engaged inwork zones: slips, trips, and falls. A 2017 report by the National Insti - tute on Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) caught the attention of many in the construction industry with its find - ing that construction workers sustain more traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) than employees in any other type of work - place in the United States. Over a study period that spanned 2003 to 2010—a time that Stallings points out included the construction slowdown that resulted from the Great Recession— NIOSH researchers found that TBIs repre - sented 25% of all construction injuries. And the biggest cause of TBIs was found tobe falls—an event for which traditional hardhats providenoprotection. Because hard hats do not have a chin strap, they are unlikely to even stay on a worker’s head in the event of a slip, trip, or fall. “We are trying to protect a human’s head with something that was designed 100 years ago for one purpose and one purpose only—dropped objects—not for a person falling, tripping, or other- wise,” Stallings said. KEEPING THE HAT ON In2017, ClarkConstructionGroupbecame the first U.S. general contractor to adopt safety helmets with chin straps for all its employees. Five years earlier, a Clark worker had to be placed into an induced coma for several days after suffering a head injury from a 4-foot fall. His hard hat had come off during the fall. That injury, along with compelling data, drove Clark to seek better head protec - tion for all its employees. Less than a year after adopting safety helmets with chin straps for all its more than 3,000 employees, a Clark worker sustained a fall froma 7-foot height onto a concrete slab. The worker was taken to the hospital where he learned that he didnot have a concussion. Hewas shown his safety helmet—which had remained on his head during the fall—and saw a 3-inch crack in it from absorbing the impact to his head, according to a May 2018 Clark press release. Other general contractors have also adopted safety helmets for use in at least some segments of their operations, including Skanska, Turner, Gilbane, HITT, andothers that stretchacross the country. Stallings has sold helmets made by Italian manufacturer KASK to several departments of transportation (DOTs) across the U.S., including VDOT, the Washington State DOT, Georgia DOT, and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. VDOT’s Wade wrote in an email that her agency had a series of incidents where hard hats came offwhen individuals fell or were struck. “The hazards VDOT employees encounter are not just overhead, but multi-impact,” she said in her message. A paving crew with Superior Paving in Northern Virginia is among the companies that switched from hard hats to safety helmets.