VIDEO: QUICK TIPS #18: How Well Do You Know Your Fall Safety ABCs?

ANDREA HOWARD: Hello and welcome to QUICK TIPS from MSC Industrial Supply, a show where the manufacturing community shares their expertise with us. Today's tip comes from Mark Cangemi at Honeywell, who is sharing the ABCs of fall protection. Let's take a look.

MARK CANGEMI: Hello. My name is Mark Cangemi, senior technical training specialist with Honeywell. And in today's quick tip, I'm going to be going over the ABCs of the personal fall protection system. To start it off, talking about A’s. A is going to stand for two things. A is firstly going to be anchor points. Anchor points are going to be structural components that the worker is going to attach to.

Examples of anchor points are going to be elements such as beams, columns, girders, structural components that we're attaching to. The second component of those anchors is going to be products that manufacturers make and provide to the market. That's going to be products such as beam clamp systems. Also products such as anchor straps or cross arm straps. These are going to be those components that the worker attaches and connects to the anchor points.

Absolutely essential. To move on, the next component of the ABCs is going to be B, which is body wear. Now, what most people think about when we talk about body wear is going to be the full body harness. Back in the day and what's still compliant is body belts but not real common. What we see used across the industry is going to be full body harnesses such as this Honeywell H500 series that we see right here.

It is essential that the worker chooses the best full body harness for the job. Moving on. C is going to be connecting devices. There are a wide variety of connecting devices that are out there. Products such as self-retracting devices or self-retracting lanyards. What we see here is a Honeywell Turbo Light Plus self-retracting lanyard, also often called a personal fall limiter.

You have larger style self-retracting devices or lanyards out there, such as a Falcon + Edge unit, a unit, a connecting device that would be attached to the worker overhead. That component can actually be attached at foot level as well. There are also different types of connecting devices, such as rope grabs, cable grabs, fall arrestors. A wide variety of them out there.

The connecting device is that essential link between the anchor points, anchor connectors, and the full body harness that that worker is going to be wearing. Now, what is often overlooked is going to be a fourth component of the system. That fourth component is going to be rescue. And when we're talking about rescue, we're talking about rescue devices, rescue systems, and also just making sure that the individuals are rescue trained in order to facilitate that rescue.

Now, if the workers are using the ABC system, we're saying that there's some chance or probability that they're going to fall and they may actually have to use it. We don't want to have to think about rescue afterwards. We want to be prepared for it. So with that, there's products out there like the Honeywell QuickPick rescue system, other components for controlled descent, such as the safe escape elite, and then also retrieval systems such as the MIGHTEVAC® plus.

That said, we're looking at the A, B, Cs of fall protection as easy as one, two, three. And then don't forget about R which is rescue. Wishing everybody safety first.

ANDREA HOWARD: For more information on the variety of Honeywell products featured, visit www.mscdirect.com/honeywell. Thanks for taking us through the ABCs of fall protection Mark, and to echo your thoughts for our audience, remember, safety first. See you next time on QUICK TIPS.