New fall protection standards for construction

As of January 1, employers who do construction work in Oregon must follow two major changes to rules protecting their workers from falling and injuring themselves.

The changes are:

• Starting January, 1, the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division's (Oregon OSHA) 10-foot trigger height—the minimum height at which workers must be protected from falls—has been lowered to six feet.
• Starting October 1, 2016, slide guards are no longer allowed as a method of protecting workers from falling off of sloped roofs.

The new requirements mean that construction contractors need to use some form of fall protection to prevent their employees from falling six feet or more to a lower level. Also, construction contractors using slide guards as a primary means of fall protection need to use a different protection method.

Check out the State of Oregon's fall protection website.