It should be no surprise that winter arrives each year, with its colder temperatures, less hospitable weather and, with it, a new set of health and safety risks.  As with most health and safety topics, planning and preparing for prevention are the best tools to make sure that your workforce are safe. Here are some of the biggest health and safety risks in winter weather and what you can do about them.  Slips and trips As the weather turns wetter...

At ProGARM we live and breathe innovation in our products and the time has come for some changes to our brand and what we look like.  In the PPE industry there’s no room for standing still as new fabrics, new fibres and new approaches to safety are continually developed. We’ve applied this mindset to our logo and visual brand, and you’ll see a refreshed look and feel appearing on our website, brochure and other ProGARM marketing materials over the next...

Nobody plans to hit a cable when doing groundworks, but even when all of the relevant checks have been carried out the risk is always present. What PPE do you need to protect against cable strikes when breaking ground? The risks and potential injuries from cable strikes In the HSE’s guidance, Avoiding danger from underground services, stark warnings are given about what can happen to someone if they accidentally hit an underground cable.  “Injuries are usually caused by the explosive effects of...

A company has been fined after three workers suffered severe burns in an Arc Flash incident in Arizona, US. The incident at metal smelting company ASARCO occurred after the installation of a breaker into a 4,160-volt switchgear.  As a result of the incident the company was prosecuted by the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and faced $278,456 in penalties in June 2019. In its prosecution, OSHA cited the company for its failure to provide a pre-job briefing...

Eliminating workplace accidents is an ambition shared across British industry. Keeping people safe at work is of paramount importance. But is a zero-accident environment a realistic aim? The evidence suggests not.  In a recent paper, Fred Sherratt and Andrew Dainty, of Anglia Ruskin University and Loughborough Universities respectively, explored the impact of a zero harm approach in the British construction industry and the results were surprising.  The research team looked at the relationship between aiming for zero accidents and the actual...

There are lots of factors to consider when thinking about how to predict when an Arc Flash might occur. Here we give a brief overview of what you need to know and do in order to properly understand the risks and predict when an Arc Flash incident is more likely. The hierarchy of control is commonly used to assess and understand risk – read more about it here. This article will discuss just a few aspects of that hierarchy. Using Arc Flash...

“Hotter than the surface of the sun” is a way we often describe the temperatures generated by an Arc Flash – so why is an Arc Flash incident so hot? What generates the heat in an Arc Flash incident? Arc Flash incidents can create temperatures of up to 35,000 Fahrenheit for a short amount of time. The surface of the sun is generally accepted to be around 10,000 Fahrenheit. Like the sun, the energy in an Arc Flash incident is created by...

Despite being explicitly referenced in legislation for the past 30 years, a shocking number of people still believe that there’s no legal requirement in the UK to take account of Arc Flash when constructing or maintaining electrical systems. Here at ProGARM, we’ve broken down some of the key parts of the Electricity at Work Regulations, 1989 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations, 1999 to help you understand some of the requirements and why they mean you...

The standard for anti-static clothing – EN 1149-5:2018 – was updated in 2018. It’s critical to understand the changes to this key standard, especially if you’re working in an environment where Arc Flash is a risk, so as market leading specialists in electrical hazard protective clothing we’ve picked our experts’ brains and put together this summary. What are EN 1149-5:2018 standards? The standards set out in EN 1149-5:2018 are designed to supplement the requirements of other protective clothing standards such...

A question we’re often asked is what is the Stoll curve? It’s a fairly technical subject, but here’s a relatively non-technical explanation of the Stoll curve and how it helps protect you from Arc Flash incidents. Explaining the Stoll Curve The Stoll Curve was developed by Alice Mary Stoll, an American biophysicist who developed fire-resistant clothing. It was developed as a way to predict how long pilots could tolerate G-forces during air combat. Stoll created a scale for predicting when...