Rules created by Occupational Safety and Health Administration are aimed to regulate work conditions and protect employees from the potential hazards at the work sites. In order to pursue this goal, OSHA calls particular attention to head protection and requires every fall protection class to include information about the necessary safety measures.
These requirements are driven by the numerous risks to which the construction workers are exposed on a daily basis:
- head injuries caused by falling objects,
- potential hazards connected to contacts with electricity,
- overhead threats,
- head traumas that lead to partial or complete mental disability.
This is why OSHA regulates not only the presence of the hard hats on-site but also informs about who should wear them, what color of the hat is needed and what stickers should be placed on it.
4 interesting facts about hard hats
1. Hard hats have different colors for a reason.
Colorful hats are not about making the working environment fun. It’s all about safety and letting everyone know what responsibilities each employee has. By the color of head protection, you can tell who is a supervisor, a general worker, or a visitor.
White hats are worn by on-site managers and engineers, yellow ones by the general construction laborers, green are designed for safety inspectors and newbies, blue are for electricians and technicians, orange are for lifting operatives and gray are for the visitors. This might differ from country to country, but the general rule stays the same.
2. Not all hard hats are the same.
Even though it might seem that a helmet is a helmet, in fact, there are two different OSHA approved hard hats. The first ones protect from the hazards that come to the top of the head, like objects falling from above. Meanwhile, the second type of hard hats aims to protect from the hazards from different directions, like hitting against a sharp corner of a side beam.
3. Stickers on the hard hat have additional significance.
Every sticker on the head protection needs to serve its purpose and cannot reduce the reliability of the helmet or cover some defects. Stickers can be used to signalize about the roles like a warden, a first aider, a team leader, an incident controller, a paramedic, a medic, an emergency response team, etc. Use the stickers in accordance to qualifications and inductions of the employees.
4. Who should wear a hard hat?
The short answer is – every employee on the construction site. According to OSHA Standard 1910.135 all electricians, linemen, carpenters, mechanics, etc., have an obligation to wear hard hats at all times during the work to minimize the probability of electrical shock when being next to the exposed electrical conductors which could contact the head.
