Does anyone have any links they can share on studies that have been done demonstrating the safety benefits of WFP use? There is tons of data out there showing the number of falls and injuries related to man-lifts and bosun’s chairs. But has anyone seen any data showing how falls and injuries have been reduced by WFP use? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
not aware of any but most accidents involve ladders.
Also I would imagine WFP use has more wear and tear on the body than the others with neck and shoulders?
But a WFP stops me from needing my 24 foot ladder on top of my van which is insanely heavy to haul around window to window.
2 Likes
Survey data can only track accidents that occur. It is very difficult to qualify whether an accident would have occurred had the user been on a ladder instead.
The only way to make a rough estimate would be to take a sample group of WFP users, and check their accident statistics against the regional or national average. Even so, it would be difficult to compare apples to apples and generate any sort of meaningful statistic.
That’s true Samuel. What I was hoping for was some sort of data about deaths / injuries to window cleaners before the advent of WFP, and statistics about deaths / injuries during the last 4 or 5 years or so, now that WFP has become mainstream.
I think it’s safe to say wfp has not reduced fatalities any. First you got to determine how many window cleaners even use it and then for the small fraction that do most of those are residential. The fatalities occur on commercial jobs, high rise. Many of the commercial businesses don’t use wfp in place of rope descent.
I believe many commercial companies with employees doing the work don’t want to spend the money for wfp since the employees are hard on equipment.
Thoughts?
2 Likes
With all due respect, jhans, I’m not sure I entirely agree.
I would venture to guess that in the US the majority of window cleaners that do mid-rise commercial work (3 to 7 stories) are now using WFP. In Europe, particularly the UK, the figure is probably above 90%.
I agree that far more window cleaning fatalities occur in high-rise work, but here in the US there are, on average, 26 fatalities annually associated with man-lifts. If you include deaths from falls from ladders, that figure will rise dramatically. Of course, the hard part is determining how many of those deaths are in the w/c industry. I have poked around on OSHA’s site, but can’t find anything specifically relating to our industry.
I was interested in injury statistics as well, not just fatalities. If we can find some hard data, I’m sure the WFP manufacturers would be all over it as a marketing tool.
1 Like
Enter the codes for window cleaning and you can search the US or individual states at least to find the fatalities. Fatalities in US from from window cleaning is about 4 a year.
The most common window cleaning accidents is from ladders, fatalities are high rise work with 99% of these fatalities were the workers fault by knowingly not following safety standards.
An analysis report compiled by OSHA lists 88 window cleaning accidents over a 15-year period, 62 of which resulted in fatalities.
2 Likes
These man lift accidents are construction related not window cleaning.
Thanks for the info jhans. What are the codes for w/c to enter on the OSHA website? It is probably impossible to tell which of those w/c fatalities occurred on mid-rise buildings where WFP could have avoided the accident. Fact of the matter is, though, that you will be just as dead falling from 5 storeys as you would if you fell from 55.
I’m sure the majority of those man-lift fatalities are construction related. Is there a way to know for sure if no w/c deaths are included in those figures?
Awesome. Thanks
SIC codes for OSHA search
window cleaning 7349
also can be listed under 1799
There has been a 100% decrease in ladder-related fatalites among those who no longer use them. If you can’t find actual stats, there’s always a bit of snarky humor (very little, mind you).
1 Like
How many ladder related fatalities are in the window cleaning industry a year?
Here’s the best search for fatalities or accidents in the industry.
Go to OSHA site, click Data, data and statistics, search inspections by NAICS, enter SIC code 7349 then submit.
Look under type column and it will chow fatality or accident, or even violation column is interesting too.
By the way OSHA protects workers, only violates for employee violations.
Have never seen a residential violation yet.
That’s great information. Thanks very much for the help.
