We all know how important it is to wear a safety helmet on-site. Their use is mostly mandatory in an effort to practice good health and safety, but also protect you from significant damage. Once upon a time, however, their use wasn’t so common.
It’s an unfortunate truth that many workers were killed or obtained serious head injuries before rules and guidelines were toughened up. We’ve certainly come a long way since then and at Leach’s, it’s our mission to ensure all those on-site make it home safely at the end of the working day.
But understandably, accidents happen. As an industry we must be proactive, well prepared, and never let complacency seep in. Keep your hard hats on, and make sure they’re in good condition.
It’s Hard Hat Awareness Week
To hammer home the head protection message, the brain injury association Headway, alongside Centurion, has launched Hard Hat Awareness Week to continue raising awareness of using and maintaining hard hats in dangerous environments.
The duo conducted a survey exploring the use of hard hats in the construction industry, producing concerning stats regarding head injuries at work:
- 15% of respondents stored their hard hat in an unsuitable way
- 24% were unaware that exceeding the expiry date on a hard hat can reduce protection
- Only 6% of workers sought medical attention for head injuries
These findings are worrisome and highlight that as an industry, we need to keep banging the health and safety drum. So, this Hard Hat Awareness Week, we’ve put together these handy tips to help keep your PPE in check:
#1 - Inspect your hard hat
It’s good practice with all construction and scaffolding equipment to conduct regular inspections. That helmet you’ve been wearing for 5 years may’ve been the best available at the time, but is it still in good shape now? Check before you put it on again. Always make sure your equipment is fit-for-purpose before use.
#2 - Ensure regulatory compliance
It is vital you have good awareness of all the relevant legislation out there. When you wear a hard hat, it isn’t just to comply with health and safety regulations… it’s to prevent serious injury. There are many cheap knockoffs around so be thorough in your research. Lives are at stake.
But as you know, our objectives go beyond compliance. We want to ensure all scaffolders and tradespersons get home safely. If we do this job to the best of our abilities, compliance is assured.
#3 - Buy the best – go BIGBEN!
But where to buy a hard hat? As the sole distributor of BIGBEN height safety helmet, you may think we have a slight bias in claiming that the BIGBEN® UltraLite Height Safety Helmet is one of the best hard hats available on the market today.
And you’re probably right. But we do truly believe it, because we’ve seen all the work that’s gone into developing it. And let’s be honest, your head is quite important. You want the best hard hat available to ensure proper protection.
The BIGBEN height safety helmet is lightweight but strong. Durable yet comfortable. Importantly, it also complies with the EN12492 and EN397 for shock absorption and penetration. This is a hard hat you can trust, going the extra mile in keeping you and your workforce safe. Some of its features include:
- Lightest height safety helmet available (417g)
- Extremely durable and comfortable
- Internal Moulded Technology: upon impact, the entire helmet takes the force evenly
- High-quality ABS+PP shell
- Shock resistance providing reliable protection
- Lining pad equipped with hot-pressing technology
