New ANSI Fall Protection Standards: What They Mean to You By Thom Kramer, P.E., CSP, Nolan Miller in OHSonline identifies the ANSI Fall protection standards and gives background information on the development of these important safety standards. You can download individual ANSI/ASSE Z359 Fall Protection standards discussed in this article, and a complete collection of Z359 Fall Protection Standards Package which contains all the individual standards in one convenient package.
In addition, ANSI has British Standards for Fall Protection, ASTM, CSA (Canadian), IEEE, DIN, ONORM (Austrian), AS (Australia) and ISO standards for fall safety. The ANSI/ASSE A10 Construction Package is a comprehensive compilation of the individual ANSI/ASSE A10 series of construction safety standards.
The ANS/ASSE A10 standards provide the safety requirements for scaffolding, steel erection, safety nets and fall protection. Demolition operation standards address debris net systems, rope-guided and nonguided workers’ hoists, commercial explosives and blasting agents, digger derricks, rigging qualifications and hearing loss prevention. The requirements for the safety of the public near construction sites and the health and safety of employees in construction environments are also supplied in this package which includes more than 30 construction and demolition standards.
You may also want to read the Analysis of Construction Fatalities – The OSHA Data Base 1985-1989 that analyzes the causes of fatalities. Of the cases that OSHA reviewed in the study, 33% of construction fatalities were from falls from elevation. A representative group of construction safety standards are listed on the ANSI webstore.
