HEALTH, SAFETY & WELLBEING
WHAT IS ROTATIONAL MOTIONAND ITS ROLE IN CONCUSSIONS?
Chris Tidy, Product Specialist at Mips and Founder of Hard Hat Awareness Week, explains the different types of brain injuries that can occur in the workplace and why employers need to understand rotational motion better to protect workers from head injuries and long-term risks.
We’ve all seen the headlines about head injuries in sports: Rugby, football and boxing, leading to potentially severe cases, long-term issues and degenerative brain conditions caused by multiple head impacts, known as sub-concussions. Many of us face the risk of head injury at work and in play. Despite the widespread and mostly mandatory use of hard hats, construction and industrial workers are still at risk for severe head injuries, including concussions. They can suffer concussions from the impact force of a slip, trip or fall and falling objects.
Construction workers are at risk for severe head injuries and concussions. Whether the head impacts the ground after a slip, trip or fall, or if a falling object hits the head, it is likely to be an angled impact, which could introduce a rotational motion to the head. Conventional hard hats protect against injuries such as skull fractures but are often not designed to address rotational motion.
We need to understand more about the different levels of protection that hard hats provide. Although we see high compliance and usage, employers and end-users often default to the lowest-cost solution when procuring safety helmets, as long as it meets the standard. The standard is only the minimum level of protection. To prevent head injuries onsite, we must first understand the risk. This involves educating the supply chain and changing the whole industry perspective. There are a lot of accident records and statistics available online; however, interpreting these is key to understanding and evaluating the risk.
We must continue pushing for better, more detailed accident reporting and statistics to take steps to protect people and ensure we focus on the areas that can have the most significant impact on wearer safety, such as traumatic brain injury (TBI) and rotational injury. The most common type of TBI is a concussion, which accounts for up to 75% of all TBI cases. These injuries are far more common than you think; 50% of TBIs go undiagnosed or detected, while 90% of diagnosed TBIs do not involve a loss of consciousness.
Many of us have seen EN397 safety helmet shock tests where a linear force is directed onto a safety helmet from height, and in most cases, the hard hat remains intact. This test is a sobering reminder of the importance of wearing head protection and demonstrates that these safety helmets are relatively good at absorbing linear impacts. The problem is that most traumatic head injuries are not caused by a linear impact to the crown of the safety helmet. Research shows that you are more likely to acquire a long-term injury from a fall than from a falling object. Still, when falling objects cause injuries, they rarely fall straight down and cause a linear impact.
Straight vs Angled Impacts A rotational brain injury results from a rapid change in the rotational velocity of the head. This rapid change can be caused by a direct hit to the safety helmet or the skull or by an indirect hit to the shoulder, leading to a rotational head motion. Injury statistics show that it is
38 | TOMORROW’S FM
twitter.com/TomorrowsFM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70
