Non-slip goes non-traditional
June 28, 2011
Non-slip shoes and flooring help keep this cook safe at Mongolie Grill in Whistler, BC
See the feet in the photo? They are the feet of a chef at Mongolie Grill in Whistler, BC, Canada.
He is wearing the Crocs Bistro: Kitchen Chef Work Shoe which is now the standard for all their kitchen staff. The shoes are designed specifically for people in the restaurant, food service, hospitality, and health care industries with non-slip properties that exceed ANSI requirements.
I found out about this non-traditional approach to safety footwear while dining out in Whistler. It was exciting to find this workplace safety tidbit on a weekend away. I took the photos while standing with the rest of the restaurant guests, watching the chefs fry our delicious food on a big, round, open grill.
Chefs at Mongolie Grill work in front of an audience that watches hungrily
How to reduce risks of slips in restaurants
Non-slip shoes like these are just one line of defence against slips in a restaurant kitchen. Health and Safety for Hospitality Small Business, a booklet from WorkSafeBC, lists additional preventive measures, including:
• Cleaning floors regularly
• Cleaning up spills immediately
• Keeping floors free of water and grease
• Posting warning signs around spills or wet floors
• Using slip-resistant waxes to polish and treat floors
• Installing non-slip tiling or other non-slip floor products
• Using rubber mats in areas where the floors are constantly wet
More resources
Clean up spills and keep floors clean. Wear proper footwear, a poster from WorkSafeBC
Prevention of Slips, Trips and Falls from CCOHS
Kitchen Tip 1: Preventing Slips, Trips and Falls from WorkSafeBC’s StartSafe series
Hospitality Today Article no. 3 “Preventing Slips and Falls” from WorkSafeBC
Three ladder deaths in one week
June 16, 2011
Photo credit: Christop Brooks-Booth on Flickr
Within a single week in May 2011, three workers in BC died after falling from ladders at relatively low heights:
* A carpenter fell approximately 10 feet off an extension ladder onto an asphalt driveway.
* A labourer fell onto asphalt from a 12-foot stepladder while powerwashing a commercial building.
* A chimney sweep, working in the rain, fell from a flat roof.
Tragic loss from preventable injuries
It’s so sad to imagine how the families and friends of these workers must be feeling. I spoke with Jessica Kruger, a workplace safety advocate who fell from a ladder when she was 15, and I asked what she thought when she heard about the recent deaths.
Jessica Kruger
“Obviously it’s pretty upsetting. I got involved as a young worker speaker hoping to prevent that,” said Jessica, now 19 and a WorkSafeBC speaker who visits schools and conferences to share her story and encourage change.
“It’s sad that it’s not happening fast. I know that it takes time, but to see people actually dying is pretty heartbreaking.”
Jessica uses a wheel chair because of her injury and hopes to play wheel chair rugby in the Paralympics one day. Her core message regarding workplace safety is this: “Don’t do anything you’re uncomfortable with. If you have a gut feeling – if you even think for two seconds that what you’re doing could be dangerous, talk to your employer and think about the different safety options you should be taking. Getting the training is more important, and that’s not only the worker’s job. It’s the employer’s, as well.”
Why are so many people falling from ladders?
Maybe it’s because ladders are so common. It surprised me to hear how many workers fell from ladders between 2001 and 2010. Thirteen people died and there were 4,214 serious injury claims. (A “serious injury” is one in which a worker loses more than 28 days of wages due to an injury.)
Most falls from ladders happen in construction, but others occur in the service industry, manufacturing, transportation/warehousing, and elsewhere. I’m sure there must be hundreds more that happen at home, too. So please take a second thought before you climb a ladder – at work or at home – and check out these resources from WorkSafeBC:
“You’re a Pro” Construction Safety Videos
Four videos that demonstrate different hazards in construction and describe how to reduce the risk of injury.
Ladder Safety on YouTube
A five-part video designed to highlight the important safety procedures associated with ladder use on construction sites. The video uses classic B&W comedic film footage and computer graphic simulations to illustrate safe ladder techniques.
Ladder Challenge
An online game where you can put your ladder safety skills to the test on a virtual construction site.
Construction Safety Series
A 12-page booklet that focuses on ladder safety and fall protection for residential construction.
Truckers falling from own cabs
June 09, 2011
What's your impact? Simulations of force on your body when you leave and enter a truck cab
Most people probably think truckers’ greatest safety risk is being in a collision. It isn’t. The most likely way truckers are injured on the job is by falling out of their cabs or off their trailers.
To show the impact of these falls, the Trucking Safety Council of BC has a new resource on its website. Determine Your Impact Force is a simulation that shows what type of force you will experience based on your body weight when you fall from certain heights.
For example, I enter my weight and see that if I jump down from the second level step, I’m taking an impact equivalent to the collision force a linebacker feels tackling a fullback. Ouch. That would hurt if I landed on my feet, and who knows what would happen if I landed on some other body part.
For curiosity’s sake, I enter 250 pounds to see how much greater the impact would be. A person of that weight could break their skull falling from the second level step – so stepping carefully is a very good idea!
“Fortunately, injuries can be prevented by taking the time to enter and exit safely and correctly,” reads the Trucking Council website, offering lots of tips and links to more information on safety in that industry.
Here’s an especially good tip for anyone getting in or out of any kind of vehicle: “…your focus should be on entry/exit movement – distraction by cell phone use, holding a coffee cup, or paperwork greatly increases the risks of losing your balance and getting injured.”
Try the simulation and see what would happen to you. Then be careful.
Deep-fryer disaster in the making
April 19, 2011
Photo credit: Jennifer Yin on Flickr
My friend Dave Dawson worked as a line cook at a busy Ottawa restaurant in the late 80s. He and his coworkers ran the kitchen with little to no supervision.
One night a cook asked Dave to do something that seemed pretty sketchy.
“I was told to re-fill a deep fryer that was on,” said Dave. “Usually you’re supposed to use buckets of liquid oil because it gets hot so fast and it goes right in and heats evenly, but they said ‘open that box of lard up and put it in the deep fryer’ so I did.”
At that time, he was a young worker – under 25 – eager to please and not comfortable asking questions. Despite his better judgment, he plopped the 15-pound cube of lard into the deep fryer.
“The piece of lard got stuck at the top and it started to smoke at the sides. We really had to hack at it to make sure it didn’t go all over the place.”
The lard was similar in size to “a small television” and hacking at it didn’t help much. The smoke got thicker, so they tried another approach.
“We got very large pots for cooking sauces – that could hold probably six litres of liquid – and we scooped some of the hot oil out of the other deep fryers and poured it over the huge chunk of lard to try to melt it down.”
Thankfully no one was hurt. People need safety training and orientation in a kitchen, but this didn’t happen at Dave’s old workplace.
“In the kitchen, it would often happen at night that new people would show up. There was no sort of mentor,” said Dave. “There was no supervisor. We had a general manager, who had to manage the waiters and waitresses too, so he was not present very often.”
Hot oil can cause seriou burns and spilled oil cause horrible slipping accidents like this “shockvertising” from the WSIB.
Safety for new and young workers in restaurant kitchens
Image from WorkSafeBC's Safety Kit for Tourism and Hospitality
StartSafe Kitchen Safety – Tip #4: Using deep fat fryers safely, from WorkSafeBC
Young Worker Safety Can’t Wait – Safety Kit for the Tourism and Hospitality Industry, from WorkSafeBC
Health and safety issues for cooks, from OHS Answers by the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety
Restaurant Safety For Teen Workers, from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), US Dept. of Labor
Stop slips in kitchens, from Britain’s Health and Safety Executive
Virtual Kitchen, from SafeWork South Australia
Safety tip 7: Deep fryer safety, from the Manitoba Tourism Education Council
Falling down my stairs at home
November 25, 2010
Photo credit: Ninja M. on Flickr
One witness described it as “epic.”
Last weekend I slipped down six carpeted stairs in my house. I was hurrying, wearing slippery nylons on stone tiles on the landing, carrying a wide plastic shoe mat. I slipped and my feet flew out from under me. I yelled “Ahhhh!” really loudly on the way down and got a huge adrenalin rush.
Somehow, like a miracle, I “surfed” down all of them on my feet, still holding the shoe mat with shoes on it. I landed on my feet and started laughing, trying to gloss over the mild embarrassment factor. Two of my friends were standing at the bottom of the stairs (about to move my couch upstairs) and I had been hurrying to clear the way for them. Read more
