A recent safety inspection on our offshore installation resulted in the mandatory wearing of chin straps on our safety helmets. We do wear chin straps as a matter of routine for work at height or any other area in which the dropping of a helmet from a person's head could cause a hazard.
On the other hand, the offshore installation is in a tropical region of the world and wearing a chin strap all the time could cause a rash due to the heat and inevitable perspiration.
Our previous guidelines were that if a ratchet type arrangement was there on the helmet, enabling the user to tighten the helmet on his / her head, a chin strap was not necessary. This has now changed to a blanket requirement to wear one.
Does anyone have any ideas on common practice in industry in this context?
Thanks

We had hard hats with a removable chin strap. It was to be used with strap when in confined spaces.

Did the inspector offer a solution... or was it just a blanket wear the strap? I think the common sense approach is best. You have control measures in place such as "wearing the hard hat with a strap when operating within the context of WAH" or where personnel have the potential to be injured should the hat fall from above. You have said "wearing a strap all the time" bearing in mind tropical conditions could result in a rash but how long are personnel operating in a hard hat for? Could a sweat absorbing cover be used on the chin strap to alleviate the discomfort such as that you would often find on a motorbike helmet?

way back in the day when i was on the "tools" i used to do a hell of a lot of work at height in MEWPs and access cradles, it was company policy that all hard hats where fitted with chin straps and these had to be worn when using such equipment.
the policy worked well, and i never came across anyone suffering from a rash caused by a chin strap.

The reason for this policy was simply if you lost your hard hat at height there was no way of retrieving it other than to lower the access equipment to the ground and pick it up - this could be time consuming and let the operative without head protection during the retrieval period. It had nothing to do with the hard hat falling and striking someone below due to the fact that we segregated the work areas anyway.

It could also depend upon the design of the "internals" of the hard hat?

Chin straps are standard practice in the wind industry where we are working at height a lot of the time. It can get really warm inside a turbine, especially if we have a hot summer like we did this year, but I have never had any complaints about the strap causing a rash. We use climbing helmets rather than hard hats though so maybe that makes a difference?

cheifinspector's approach to this seems the most reasonable. Fit the helmets out with the straps and use them when needed

Have chin straps fitted as a matter of course and consider adding a plastic chin guard to the strap which keeps it correctly fitted and adds to the comfort levels.

Risk assess at the start of each shift and instruct crews to wear where the risk of a helmet falling of as a result of body position or adverse weather is foreseeable.

Some organizations mandated use of chin strap, and particularly is more evident in South Asian companies as achrn mentioned and sometimes they are accentuate on that more rather than more serious issues on job sites

Best practice, use it in offshore environment

SHV

I work offshore in Brazil, we have helmets with chinstraps inside(attached)
When we first started the project we did not include wear chinstraps into our induction.

Unfortunately the client witnessed 2 persons helmets come off in separate occasions, 1. in high winds 2. person bending over picking up item.

The client asked that we have a blanket chinstrap policy, as this is the norm with rigs offshore in Brazil.

As we are on a vessel we came to an agreement that the chinstrap should be work if a risk assessment dictated. i.e. High winds, work at height, etc & put allow the deck foreman to notify personnel if he thought the chinstrap was required.

The client was happy with this solution & we have had no further issues

Mr H&S