Let’s agree: we’ve all made a few bad decisions at some time or another in our lives. If you’re reading this, chances are extremely good that those bad decisions didn’t kill you (yet). But every day roofers go to work, they must make the same decision before they take their first step onto a jobsite: will they (1) prevent falls; (2) protect themselves from the effects of a fall; or (3) do nothing at all. Here is a simple question to ask yourself: “What am I going to do about protecting my future today?”
According to a 1992-98 study of roofing deaths in the United States conducted by the Center to Protect Worker’s Rights (CPWR), roofers have a work-related death rate of 29/100,000, more than twice that of the entire construction industry (15/100,000). While falls account for approximately 33 percent of all construction site deaths annually, fatal falls for roofers average about 73 percent of all of their work-related deaths. More than 90 percent of these fatal falls originate from the roof’s edges. The study found that fall protection was either neglected or omitted in almost 100 percent of these cases.