Combatting Slips and Falls
By Steve Feldman
American Safety Technologies, Inc.
Morgan Safety Products Division, Roseland, N. J.
Slips and falls cost American businesses a fortune in lost productivity, workers' compensation insurance, and other expenses. Health care costs alone amount to more than $37 billion each year.
The psychological damage in pain, anguish, and the loss of worker morale are beyond measure. With this notorious record, slips and falls have to be considered the number one enemy of work place safety.
Because slips and falls are so common, they are often thought to be inevitable—a cost of doing business. Sometimes they are dismissed as unpredictable accidents visited upon clumsy people. Little thought is given to prevention.
These attitudes need to be changed. The fact is that slips and falls are among the easiest accidents to isolate and prevent. After all, each of us takes thousands of steps every day without mishap.
Slips and falls are not normal. They result from an abnormality in the environment that suddenly makes a routine act dangerous. A slip occurs when there is a sudden loss of traction between the shoe—or foot—and the walking surface. A skid results when there is a sudden loss of friction between the contact surface of a machine—usually the wheels—and the floor.
Normally, clean and dry surfaces provide enough traction for us to move without slipping or skidding. But add a contaminant like a banana peel, and even Fred Astaire isn't safe.
Floor Surfaces
Many well-run, conscientious businesses take great pride in their clean, shiny floors. These gleaming surfaces project an aura of cleanliness and order that demonstrates concern about, and pride in, the work environment.
But these same smooth, shiny surfaces turn slick from exposure to contaminants such as water, chemicals, rain, snow, ice, grease, oil, dirt, and powders. When these contaminants combine with a naturally smooth, non-porous surface such as steel, concrete—especially coated concrete—diamond plate, or tile, slips and falls are inevitable.
Anti-slip flooring systems
If floors are to be made less slippery, it is important to match the floor surfaces to the work environment. Three issues need to be considered.
First, that is the nature of the traffic in the area? Areas designed for heavy vehicle traffic require a more aggressive and durable surface than areas designed for foot traffic.
Second, what contaminants are likely to affect the surface? It is usually a good idea to plan for the worst case scenario so that the surface provides more protection than ordinarily necessary. Common contaminants include solvents, chemicals, hydraulic fluids, acids, oils, grease, gasoline, food by-products, ultraviolet rays, soaps, and cleaning compounds, powders, metal shavings and filings, and plain old water. Do these contaminants pool or pile up in certain area? Are contamination problems occasional or chronic? Third, what is the nature of the surface itself? It is a ramp, dock, catwalk, floor, step, or dimly lit hallway? What is it made of: steel, concrete, wood, tile?
Having determined the traffic makeup, contaminant exposure, and the nature of the surface, consider whether to adopt a short term or a long term surface treatment. Temporary safeguards include peel-and-stick tread tapes, sand added to paint, and chemical etches. All produce a basic anti-slip surface when new and in good condition.
But these treatments tend to wear quickly and lose their effectiveness after 6 to 18 months. They are useful in areas that receive minor wear, where cleanability isn't an issue, and where contamination is slight. They are an inexpensive way to solve small problems in isolated areas, abut the need for constant re-application makes them expensive over the long haul.
Mats are a durable alternative often used in spot applications around machinery and work situations. If contaminants can be localized and contained, mats can be effective. They provide the added benefit of reducing fatigue as well as slips. But mats can also turn a slip and fall problem into a trip and fall problem. Tapes are notorious for peeling up, and mats must hug the floor to be effective.
For larger areas, the best answer is to alter the floor surface itself. Two elements are necessary to provide traction in the presence of contaminants: friction and adequate surface profile.
The first quality is obvious; a high-friction surface provides the mechanical bite necessary to secure the sole of the shoe (or moving object) upon contact. The second element involves a surface texture that will displace the contaminant so that the object can come into contact with the friction surface. With a contaminant like oil on a floor treated with sand-in-paint, the hydroscopic adhesion of the oil will not be broken up by the relatively unaggressive profile of the sand. In this situation, the sole of a shoe would ride on a film of oil and not contact the friction surface of the floor. A slip will likely occur. The lack of an adequate surface profile to defeat contaminants is the reason most anti-slip solutions fail. To be effective, anti-slip solutions have to be engineered with a surface profile that is sufficient to break through pooled contaminants and allow a moving object (a show or a wheel) to contact the rough peaks of the friction surface to provide traction. Obviously, a profile that works for heavy forklift traffic in a corrosive environment wouldn't be the same profile you'd want in barefoot traffic areas like showers and locker rooms. Nor should you pay for more protection or durability than necessary. The key is to match the solution to the problem.
A very useful and cost-effective solution for many applications is epoxy anti-slip coatings. First developed for use by the Navy on aircraft carrier decks, these high-performance coatings were designed to work under the most difficult conditions imaginable. The deck of a modern aircraft carrier is one of the busiest, and potentially, one of the most dangerous, places in the world. The flight deck is exposed to contamination from jet fuel, hydraulic fluids, grease and oil, salt spray, UV rays, and terrible storms. The surface has to endure the impact of 15,000 tailhook landings by 60,000 pound fighter jets slamming onto the surface at over 170 mph.
Today, many of these carrier-proven coatings are available for commercial and industrial use in a variety of formulations. They offer ease of application with little downtime (your own personnel can apply them) and are available in a wide range of anti-slip profiles and formulations to match traffic and contaminant conditions. They are among the most durable, effective and cost-efficient anti-slip floor treatments.
Slips and falls are not "accidents;" they are the opposite: the predictable consequences of foot and vehicular traffic on smooth, contaminated surfaces. If slips and falls are to be prevented, the gleaming floor will have to be replaced as the symbol of a progressive organization. With a new emphasis on workplace safety, a good looking floor is the one that protects workers from dangerous slips and falls while increasing productivity through increased traction and lowered costs.
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