From the course: Occupational Safety and Health: Slips, Trips, and Falls

PPE and personal behavior

- So far as I've talked about walking and working surfaces and the things that we can do to mitigate the chances that they become slip hazards, I've mostly focused on correcting or maintaining just one aspect of the hazard and that's the surface itself. But really, controlling slipping hazards is a matter of maintaining some friction as we walk over a surface. The walkway itself is one surface, but your shoes or your boots are the other surface. A surface that provides plenty of traction when you're wearing proper footwear can still be very slippery if you're wearing worn out shoes or boots with worn down slippery soles. Ladder rungs that are textured to prevent slipping can still be slippery with flat shoes that have no treads. And I already discussed the need to wear proper work shoes or boots in the snow. I bring this up here because I see this issue on work sites sometimes and I've seen it contribute to slip and fall injuries. Kind of goes like this. The employer does a great job of maintaining the walking and working surface, but an employee slips and falls and get injured because they're wearing worn out boots that have no tread at all, so the soles of the boots are just slippery and they don't provide any traction for them. This can also happen if you walk through something like oil and don't clean it off the bottom of your shoes or boots. Now your footwear should be appropriate for your environment, whether you're trail running, working on a construction site, performing maintenance outside, or working inside. There are lots of different considerations for footwear when it's used as PPE that could include things like chemical resistance or steel toe requirements. And you can learn more about that in my PPE course here on LinkedIn Learning. For this course, just remember that no matter what type of footwear is appropriate for your environment, it needs to be maintained. If you get oil or something slippery on the bottom, it needs to be cleaned off or it's going to really increase the chances that you slip and fall. If the bottoms are worn out and don't have enough tread left on 'em to provide traction, they're going to need to be replaced. Now in a workplace, this can often be the responsibility of each individual, not the employer, but in any case, they're your shoes or boots, so you're the one in the best position to keep them clean and to see when they need to be replaced. Another personal aspect of preventing slips, trips and falls is to pay attention to where you're walking and working. Don't take short cuts to a work area when a walkway has been established. Don't try to save a few steps by cutting across a snowy, icy parking lot when a safer walkway's been cleared. If a path's been established on a roof where you're doing maintenance, take that, even if it takes a few extra steps to get where you're going. Some other things to remember are to slow down when you're navigating a slippery area. You may be in a hurry to get where you're going or to finish the job, but if you fall and get injured, that's really going to slow things down. So watch where you're going. Carrying so much that you can't see where you're going is a major contributor to slip and trip types of falls. And don't even get me started on texting and walking. That's such a problem that internet videos of people walking into things and getting hurt while they text and walk is a thing. So please just don't do it.

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