If you are a construction worker working on high rise buildings or just a regular guy who does some work on your roof, you should be using safety harnesses at all times. Most people are scared when it comes to the word “harness.” Safety harnesses sound complex to use and expensive, but they are in fact easy to use and fairly reasonably priced. Each year thousands of preventable deaths and injuries can be avoided by simply using a safety harness.
So what exactly is a safety harness? A safety harness is simply a special harness that is fitted around your chest, back, arms, legs, and shoulders in such a way that it will “break” your fall. Harnesses are attached to a special lifeline rope designed to withstand and break a person’s fall from a certain amount of feet. Now, when you do actually fall, your body weight is magnified many times. This can create thousands of pounds of pressure on the harness, metal connectors, and lifeline. Safely harness equipment is specially designed and tested so that it can break a person’s fall.
When a harness breaks your fall, it distributes the incredible force of the fall along different parts of the body. This prevents serious internal injury because the force is spread out.
What does this mean? It means you should never simply tie a rope around your body when you are above 10 feet and hope that rope will secure you from a fall. Believe it or not, some people do this.
You see, when you do fall, any rope attached to you will in fact stretch. If you don’t factor that stretch in, you could fall and although the rope might be shorter than the distance of the ground, it could stretch and you will still hit the ground. In addition, the point of rope connected to the body will pack an incredible mount of force once it breaks the fall. If you are not wearing the proper equipment, that force could shatter rips and cause internal injuries.
A safety harness is specially designed to distribute that force evenly along your body.
A safety harness actually comes with three parts. First there is the actual safety harness that fits over the body. The second piece is the lanyard. The lanyard is a special robe with two buckles – one that clips to the back of your safety harness D ring, and the other the can be used to quickly clip into a lifeline or a secured area.
Wearing a safety harness can save your life. So make sure you do!