It is the responsibility of general contractors to oversee and coordinate the safety of their contractors and subcontractors to assure the safety of all persons on their jobsite. People fall from heights such as ladders, stairs, or work platforms. Slips, trips and falls to the same level are also a frequent occurrence. Many factors affect the causes of falls and many of them can be reasonably controlled. The National Safety Council has published in its yearly Accident Facts publication for many years the fact that falls are the leading cause of deaths and serious injuries in the U.S. when motor vehicle accidents are excluded.
Falls cause injury to people at home, at work, or in public places.
We believe that application of a proper understanding of the basic fundamentals of the causes of falls will lead designers, architects, engineers and facility managers and employers to the necessary place to be able to prevent or minimize the effects of most falls whether it was a slip and fall on a walking surface, a trip over an obscure single step, a fall on stairs or a fall from elevation. Warnings are to describe safe use of the product. For warnings to be proper they must meet certain requirements. Many product warnings have been evaluated and their adequacy assessed by us ranging from industrial machinery to consumer products to chemical labeling. The maritime environment presents a particular challenge to safety professionals because of time honored traditions of designing and doing things in certain ways which many times are unnecessarily hazardous.