Posted By Richard Mathews
I’m not aware of any evidence that wearing safety glasses has ever caused any long term eye damage, but I have lots of evidence that not wearing it has caused sudden, severe long term eye damage.

I do take the point that if each task were suitably risk assessed most workers would not need to wear eye protection and this is true of a lot of PPE. The problem is though, when people are moving from one area to another and they pass someone who is, say using an angle grinder to cut steel bar. You can see the obvious dangers.

Having said that many construction sites do, in my humble opinion, go overboard with blanket PPE rules that are nothing to do with suitable and sufficient risk assessment and everything to do with avoiding doing the risk assessment by just implementing control measures that are not necessary at the time.

On one construction site I was required to wear safety boots (not shoes as they don’t give ankle support) with steel toe caps and mid-soles, hi-vis jacket, hard hat and gloves. Sensible precautions for someone working on a construction site you might say. Ah but, the site in question was six days away from hand over and I was only going there for a progress meeting and would be walking on a finished tarmac walkway where there was no risk of injury to the feet, unless I trod on my own toe, no risk of head injury by falling objects, unless a lump of ice fell off an passing aeroplane, no risk of injury or contamination of my hands, unless my biro leaked (I’ll start using pencils, oh no better not…..splinters). OK I’ll concede the hi-vis there was one fork lift working at the other side of the site. So what happened to the risk assessment process?

Richard

Posted By Advanced Safety
I also had a site where my client had bricklayers working on a sheeted scaffolding, who all had to wear safety glasses regardless of the risk. When this was challenged, the Principal Contractor stated that their eye injury statistics had reduced dramatically. When i asked if anyone had measured the trip injury statistics, i was told this was not relevant, regardless of the fact that the Bricklayers had complained of blurred vision and an increase in trip incidents.

The result. A new site started 100 yards away and virtually all of the Bricklayers, left the site to join the new site where eye protection was mandatory when there was a risk of eye injury, but not when simply laying a brick. (all cutting of bricks was carried out in a specialist area by persons wearing PPE)

The same contractor also tried to enforce the wearing of Fall arrest harnessing at a height of 1.8m as they claimed they could not fit an internal guard rail to the scaffolding to prevent the fall.

I have always found that if the reasoning behind the wearing of PPE is practical and based on assessment, then it will be worn without objection. My experience only of course, i am sure others will disagree.

Posted By Robert K Lewis
Perhaps the real reason most people find light eye protection uncomfortable or creating tiredness or restricting vision is that the cheapest is best policy rules most of the time. I find that the same sorts of issues arise with glove policies. One size and type fits all purchasing leads to nobody having what is actually needed for their job.

Consultation and proper selection of PPE often resolves most problems.

Bob

Posted By Salus
Hi SM, I am with SKL on this one, also hardly likely to find any previous evidence of any damage / injury being caused as you could then nick the manafacturer / supplier.

People will wear good PPE but it is generaly more expensive.

Sites require PPE to be worn because the site has not finished yet and you will always get some operatives who have to wear it at all times saying why do I have to wear mine when they do not, so they blanket the site rules until project complete.

Richard, it is always good practise to wear PPE when on a site,you would have looked a bit foolish if your meet venue had to be changed for any reason, to some working part of the site and u did not have the PPE to enable the PC to allow u on site (especially if you were employed by the PC)