Safety Helmet: How Important Are They?

A simple safety helmet can indeed make an immense difference for fire fighting workers from a safety point of view.

Just where do workers need a helmet?

Helmets primarily are designed to keep potential collisions inside the level of human brain tolerance. According to the Australian government''s safety guidelines, workers are required to wear helmets on sites where they are at the risk of being struck on the head by a falling object or could hit their head against an object. Thus, at any place on the surface, safety guidelines indicate that workers are required to wear a helmet. While the risks are pretty obvious on high rise structures, even a building floor could be risky for the workers. Safety helmets certainly aren''t necessity to wear everywhere and if a risk assessment of the site doesn''t identify any risks of head injuries, then they need not be worn.

Will any helmet work?

Different environments and situations require different kinds of helmets. In general situations, a helmet design that has been crash tested and built in authorized standards can be considered safe enough. Yet, a safety helmet that is good enough to wear during plastering of the inner rooms may not offer adequate protection for workers working at heights. Specialized safety helmets with advanced features like chemical and heat resistance, earmuffs and proximity sensors may be very necessary while performing certain jobs. While not mandatory, several prominent construction companies also make the use of color coded helmets for different professionals working at their construction sites.

What should be observed before buying helmets?

A helmet''s functionality lies in keeping workers as safe as possible, because of which certain aspects have to be carefully analyzed before helmets are bought. More often, helmets are purchased in bulk even before the actual work on a site begins. Thus, a detailed analysis has to be done to ensure that every safety helmet manages to adequately fit the needs of workers at the site. To avoid wastages, it would be best to hire a consultant who could calculate the exact specifications required for the workers. Safety helmet manufacturers often produce different range and size of helmets to accommodate the needs of the client. There are different variants of safety helmets, to suit different working environments. Thus, rather than random or instinctive judgments, it would be ideal if the exact specifications of required helmets were pre-determined.