HSE People - Health and Safety Community

Hi All

I am hoping to start a bit of a debate on the above issue. We are currently working with a client who is insisting our guys wear their safety specs even in the rain.

We are working in the coldest wettest part of north Scotland undertaking civils works on a Brownfield site. It rains most days and wearing safety specs is in the opinion of many on site, a bigger hazard than not wearing them.

There is arguments both way and I want to see how others have tackled this issue. Our thinking is to include in our Risk Assessments which jobs can be done without safety specs when the weather is bad and which can't.

Is anyone aware of any guidance or industry best practice on this issue?

Look forward to everyone's thoughts.

From my point of view there is no case for argument. PPE is provided to protect against injury and injuries can occur anywhere - the location of, or type of work is irrelevant. Imagine an incident investigators report if an eye injury occurs due to someone not wearing eye protection because it was inconvenient. No Brainer

This question has been asked & answered so many time in an offshore environment & is always replyed with 2 words..... Risk assessment if you do a risk assesment & find there is a lesser or no chance of getting hurt or injured without glasses then let them work without them if however there is an equal or greater chance of being hurt then they stay. You must of course take into consideration, regulations, ACOPS, work habits, COSHH, environment, type of glasses, etc. etc. etc. Alarp means alarp & cost should never be a factor as you have a duty of care to your staff.

N.B. there are a great many anti mist/fog glasses on the market at a multitude of prices & this has gone round the offshore environment for at least the last 16 years.

Regards
Michael Mashford

Go back to the basic s, may I suggest.
Controls are used(in this case goggles) to reduce the risk of an activity, in area, process, etc. If the control that you proposed would actually increase the risk, then you have to do another assessment. We know that controls in an assessment should follow control heirarchy. Follow it and you will be able to see more clearly(no pun inteded) on how you do the prescription to the management. Accident investigators worth his salt follows the same logical patern, I hope.

I'm in Ft.McMurray and we deal with this issue everyday in the cold winter especially. The issue here is fogging more than rain though. As Mr. Mashford just said, risk assessment is how to deal with it. I haven't seen a single risk assessment that has definitively has made safety glasses as a hazard. PPE is the last line of defense as we all know so what barriers will be put in place if PPE is not on to protect the worker? Regarding the anti fog/ anti mist glasses and wipes, we to date haven't found one that works especially when the worker is actually working. If anyone knows of a product that is field proven by workers please pass it along so I can try it. Regards, Dave Woodford

I agree with Michael.

There are lens cleaning/antifogging products available that will lessen or completely eliminate the issues with water beading and/or fogging on lenses. I have worked with these products in high humidity (industrial cooling tower), rain and extreme cold weather conditions with no adverse effects.

Before eliminating PPE, these items need to be looked into rather than putting any person at risk.

I've been working in the rail and construction industry for the last few years and have come across this issue many times. We tell our staff (foreman/supervisor level) that if there is rain such that their vision is impaired by the safety goggles then they can, on a risk basis, take them off. We challenge them to why and they generally give a good response in that there was more risk from wearign them than not. If taking them off still presents a significant risk then I would expect work to be topped. Michael - in relation to your comment 'Alarp means alarp & cost should never be a factor as you have a duty of care to your staff.' - Cost is always a factor in ALARP decisions, it's a key part of deciding whether control/mitigation measures are considere reasonable.

Hi,

I would have to stand by the point that there is never a time "not" to wear eye protection. We work in western Canada where the temperature today for example is -42C with the wind chill. If by chance the safety glasses or goggles fog up the workers are advised to warm them up in a safe location and then continue work after that time. This slows down production but at least the work is done safely.

Ski wax has been used & works well.

Maybe a ratter simplistic response; but what if the individual is a prescription spectacle wearer? However, it’s the same old story – in the eyes (no pun intended) of the uninitiated there appears to be a fixation with safety specs and shoes. Obviously I’m not familiar with the site in question; but is an eye injury likely?

Indeed a no-brainer. You will never forgive yourself if something happens to your eyes and you weren't wearing the glasses. Never ever, just for a spot of rain!

Would an anti fog coating help when applied on the outside of the lenses?

its company policy though and we cannot pick and choose wether to wear only when we think its safe to do so , therefore as ive said "stop work , but keep the glasses on " if u feel unsafe , that way we cant be disiplined

Why is this even being debated weather conditions dont dictate safety.Personal protective equipment is designed to work in conjunction with it. Would you rather loose the sight of an eye because of misguided perception, discomfort you can live with you cannot work with one eye. Nigel Ellerton

As a manufacturer of eyewear can i share some knowledge. 1. there is a standard (optional for anti mist and scratch) IE EN166 1 f or b K N N resistance to misting 8 seconds over a 50 degree c pot. Uvex coating exceed by 3.5 times?. K coating is tested by releasing sand onto a rotating lens. Uvex exceeds all tests. The coating is bonded and will stay for the life of the product. Others use a coating that is detergent based and comes off after 5 washes. 2. We also have a nano coated lens tested offshore, shipping and construction and used on MOD flight decks at sea. Lens comes from a absolute optically faultless mould. The water has nothing to adhere to and falls off taking the contaminents with it?. These are in use and working. We can guarantee anti mist anti scratch and rain resistant lenses. if you require assistance contact me on k.prout@uvex.co.uk

The trend appears to be to use of a Risk Assessment and I support this without reservation. If the control measures compound the risk they are not effective and should be revised possibly using a dynamic Risk Assessment. However, I feel we are creeping towards a litigious society approach where common sense is the last resort. The manager on the spot should be capable of making the call having balanced all the risks. There is no absolute answer to this issue.

If the risk in either case is so great (Potential loss of sight) - stop the work! If you have a good safety culture there should not be a problem. Remember what happened at Piper Alpha because of pressures of work.

Hi guys thanks for the response so far. Kevin would be interested to see what specific products you would recommend?

The site we are working has very little in the way of hazards just now and we are being made to enforce a blanket eye protection policy which I agree has saved lots of incidents in the past. I am in the middle on this one and can see both sides of the argument. The rain here is that really wet stuff that just buckets down all day. Add to that gusting winds of up to 30mph and you rims on hats and constantly having to clean safety glasses isn’t a real solution. Have heard about anti misting anti fogging glasses and would be interested to see how they work in our situation.

PPE tests in a lab I am sure would give good results but we have guys outside in almost freezing conditions getting blasted by wind and rain. They have multiple layers of clothes and PPE causing them to sweat and adding to the problem.

Kevin

ERGONOMICS----RISK ASSESMNT---PPE is the last lne of defense of a worker.
so find an alternative way

http://www.jacksonsafety.com/linkdetails.cfm?groupid=3010343 Please check out the Jackson Safety Monogoggle XTR Shield (link above). It will protect the face and eyes from the wind and rain. If you get the Tear-Off lens, you can quickly restore vision (note: Jackson does not make the tear-off lens for this. I will update this post once I can find the correct ones to get). Using additional specialty PPE such as full brim hard hats with the additional visor/sun shield and chin straps will help immensely. Certain job tasks might be able to get away with no glasses, but it is a horrible precedent to start. Additionally, if you take away the safety glasses YOU DO NOT REMOVE THE HAZARD TO VISION. You merely expound the hazard. Water and wind will still present a DANGER to vision and exposing your guys to the same problem directly rather than indirectly. With wind you will also be exposing them to blowing debris.

I totally believe in eye protection and as a trade union H&S Rep 2 words I abhor are reasonbly practicable.
From what I can see, no pun intended, if you are out in an open field , surveying for example, wearing safety glasses in the rain is both unreasoable, impracticle and a hindrance to carrying out your work in a competent manner. On my last major site there were 5 tower cranes working in a very restricted area (150m x 150m) and the amount of complaints that I received from the banksmen were considerable. The outcome of this was that it was found to be considerably more dangerous for them to be wearing them in adverse weather conditions than not wearing them at all. I had the argument put to me about people in the street wearing glasses when it was raining, did thy tae them off. The answer was of course not, but the case I put forward was that they were walking along perfectly flat pavements, head down, could duck into shop doorways or held an umberella over their heads, all of which does not apply on construction sites.
Therfore I conclude that it is horses for courses and that proper risk assessments be carried out and that commom sense prevail rather than stick to hard and fat rules as if they were set in stone.

John

I'm going to fork this topic now and ask John why he abhors the phrase "reasonably practicable"?

Richard

Having worked on the railway as a thermit welder all over the country for over 10years i understand your problem. Eye protection used to cause us problems from either misting up in the cold/ sweating or from the rain, it got so bad visibilty was 0% which made it more dangerous by not seeing what you were doing, dispite using various cleaning, anti fog and so called wonder safety glasses nothing worked. This led to many welders working without eye protection (what should never be done) to finish the jobs as pressure was put on from above to open the lines for trains.

But having nearly finished my Nebosh G/C all PPE is provided for a reason to protect staff fom injury as a last line of defence, but it should also be fit for its purpose. My advice would be to seek out these wonder eye protection to work in these conditions (good luck) or to simply move to a place of safety to clean the eye protection

Let’s try one piece of Potato, cut in two pieces in order to have the liquid content and apply directly on the lenses of the safety glasses .

We can use one piece of this divided potato .

During or after the rain or in cold conditions , we can verify that non problem of moisture condensation on the safety glasses.

This experience was done on the car windshield in case of the windshield wipers are out of order or accident.

The other idea is to try starch solution as 20 percent solution end to wash the safety glasses before the use.

Good luck

L .HAMRA

One thing I haven't seen mentioned as yet is the arrangement of the work. As a prescription glasses wearer since I was 4.5 yrs old, I quickly learned that if I arranged my work so the rain was coming from my back and wore visored headgear that my glasses would function sufficiently (albeit somewhat degraded) to get the job done safely.