Fall Prevention or Fall Protection? 5 Things to Consider
Date Posted: April 10, 2025
Posted In: Discussion,
From American Society of Safety Professionals: Working at height is a known safety hazard. When determining the best way to protect a worker from the hazards of working at height, it’s important to consider fall prevention before fall protection.
Fall prevention is especially critical in situations where fall arrest systems or other forms of PPE are ineffective or not typically used, such as potential falls of less than 15 feet, says Rob Brauch, president of Occupational Health and Safety Solutions Inc., a longtime safety professional and member of ASSP. A fall from 15 feet can achieve a speed of impact of 21 miles per hour and hit the body with 9,000 joules of energy — the equivalent of two exploding grams of TNT.
“Many of those falls occur when a person is climbing on machines they shouldn’t have been climbing, working from a ladder that wasn’t secure or being in an area that wasn’t protected,” he says.
These types of falls are also alarmingly common — they represent nearly half of falls that result in injuries or death, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — yet are not often the focus of fall prevention or fall protection efforts.
“These fatalities do not need to occur,” Brauch says. “Many are preventable without going through all the various steps needed to get into harness, have tie-offs and do all the different things we’d have as traditional fall protection.”