The National Safety Council (NSC) has observed that over the past decade the number of workplace injuries has declined, but the number of fatalities has stayed consistent, even going up in some years. To address this, they have created the “Work to Zero” initiative to identify potential innovations to try and eliminate workplace fatalities.

They have also released a research report “Safety Technology 2020: Mapping Technology Solutions for Reducing Serious Injuries and Fatalities in the Workplace”. The paper reviews the current state of safety technology, provides insight from interviews with over 40 EHS professionals and maps sources and causal factors of workplace deaths to promising safety technologies.

The report says that employers may not be doing enough to protect workers. They looked at 18 different non-roadway, hazardous situations in which workers are most likely to die and provides between five and eight potential technology solutions for each situation. The top three hazardous situations and corresponding technologies identified in the report include:

Work at Height: This includes deaths resulting from falling to a lower level, falling objects and injury from the sudden arrest of a lifeline. Contributing to these risks are things like worker behavioral failure, leadership failure and scaffolding/platform failure.

              Potential technology solutions include:

• Mobile anchor points which can reduce falls to lower levels by allowing workers to attach fall arrest systems to a roof with weighted anchors that do not require penetration of the structure
• Aerial lifts and platforms which can reduce falls to lower levels by giving workers more stability and flexibility in their movement without having to traverse a structure
• Self-retracting lines which can be connected to anchors and automatically stop a fall to reduce injuries caused by dangerous amounts of slack in a lifeline from abrupt falls

Workplace violence: This includes deaths resulting from intentional physical violence to a colleague, weapon violence and violence due to robbery. Contributing to these risks are lack of workplace awareness, lack of training or supervision and lack of security measures.

              Top technology solutions include:

• Real-time response management mobile apps which utilize a phone’s tracking and communication functionality to give responders better visibility of who is at risk and where they are located without relying on the worker to report their status
• Video cameras which can be worn on-body or fixed, and can monitor and detect patterns of physical behavior and movement that could indicate physical violence without workers needing to identify aggressive behaviors directly
• Wearable or mobile app-based panic buttons which allow workers to immediately alert emergency personnel when a dangerous or life-threatening situation arises

Repair and maintenance: This includes deaths resulting from machine energization, being struck by machinery or being entangled in machinery. Contributing to these risks are lack of training or supervision, fatigue and machinery malfunction.

              Top technology solutions include:

• Machinery cutoff light curtains which safeguard personnel near moving machinery at the point of operation and in the perimeter of the machine through automatic stoppage of machinery when the light field is interrupted
• Power management systems which control electrical functions and manage capacity and load shedding to ensure electrical and arc flash safety
• Permit to work technologies which can centralize authorization and clearance of tasks to be carried out by front line workers

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