Canadian Occupational Safety

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2018 31 compliant head protection is required. "A hard hat provides protection against a serious injur y. A bump cap doesn't protect against anything other than bumps and scrapes — that's it," he says. "If the application deems it necessary that you need an approved hard hat because there's a potential exposure to injury from the impact of falling or glancing (flying) objects, hard hats must be worn. The employer has to select the right device for the situation." There is no CSA standard for bump caps and no nationally recognized stan- dard for the caps in Canada. They are not CSA or ANSI approved. However, there is a European standard — EN 812: 2012 — that sets out design criteria and impact requirements. Caps are tested and those meeting the standard are marked as EN 812-certified. Generally, provincial regulation requires employers provide approved industrial protective headwear, and, in most cases, also requires headwear that meets CSA Z94.1 standard (which does not apply to bump caps), ANSI Z89.1 or an equivalent standard. The rare mentions of bump caps, as in the regulations of Alberta and Mani- toba, state that an employer may permit workers to wear "bump hats" only when the risk of injury is limited. SELECTION AND MAINTENANCE In selecting bump caps, safety managers or workers should look at protective coverage — make sure the cap covers the areas of the head where bumps are likely to occur. A bump cap should fit securely and be comfortable. Both the plastic shell and baseball-style caps can be adjusted to fit better. Choosing a hat with well-placed vents on the sides will increase comfort. Appearance is also a factor in selection, Wolski says, Quilley says. Where workers are moving between different tasks or areas, some that require a hard hat and others that don't, they may not want to have to keep changing their head protection. "For example, while I'm working under the vehicle, I could wear a bump cap. Then, I get out from under the vehicle, but I'm in a shop that has an overhead crane. Now, there's a danger of fall- ing objects, so I am legally required to put on a hard hat. Some people would always have to be changing hats and they would have to own two pieces of equipment," he says. "In some shops, you could easily have two kinds of operations going on and that's why you would have to default to the greater protection." Bump caps cannot replace hard hats. The shell is thinner and weaker than that of a hard hat. Moreover, because they lack a hard hat's engineered sus- pension, which absorbs the energy from an impact on the shell and spreads the force evenly over the wearer's head, bump caps cannot protect a worker against a major impact, says Claudio Dente, president of Newmarket, Ont.- based Dentec Safety Specialists. "Bump caps don't provide much of any protection because they are not designed to provide head protection like a hard hat. Hard hats are CSA approved for impact and penetration and dielec- tric (against electric shock and burns) protection. Bump caps don't do any of that," he says. As a result, he adds, a safety manager has to decide based on a risk analysis of overhead hazards, whether a bump cap is sufficient protection. If not, legally but how much weight is given to it will depend in large part on whether the employee deals with the public. "A lot of times, the biggest complaint we hear is, this isn't very attractive. So, people usually consider that as well." Bump caps should be checked periodically to see if they are still in good condition, he adds. Look for changes in how a cap bends or moves. If there are any cracks, the cap should be replaced. As with most safety equipment, Quilley says, employers should allow workers to try out and select the particular make of protective headwear they will wear. Once, he recalls, during a review of a company's safety program, he asked shop mechan- ics about the bump caps they were wearing. The mechanics worked in the trucking division of a shop that maintained vehicles for companies in the oil and gas industry. They would often elevate the trailers to work on the undercarriage. Before buying the bump caps, the shop had brought in a number of caps of different styles and from different manufacturers and asked workers to evaluate them. "I saw the mechanics wearing baseball-style bump caps and I asked them how they liked them. They loved them. They got to pick them," he says. "And, I found it really interesting: I was in the coffee room later and saw them sitting there and they were still wearing the caps. That tells you some- thing. People who are not comfortable in their hats take them off when they can." Bump caps effectively reduce painful injuries, Quilley says. He does not know a mechanic who hasn't bumped into something underneath a car. "As soon as you've done that, you wish you had something harder between you and the thing you bumped into," he says. "Typically, you turn to get your wrench or something and you hit your head into something hard. And that hurts. Most people who wear them appreciate them." Linda Johnson is a Toronto-based freelance journalist who has been writing for COS for seven years.

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