Professional painters are able to give a building a fresh new look. But painting is not without any hazard. It actually comes with safety risks. Aside from inhaling chemicals and being struck by falling objects, painters at height face the more sudden risk of falling. This risk however may be eliminated by using safe scaffolding.
Many studies on falling from heights have been done and every year statistics show that injuries and fatalities due to falls from height still occur. For example, an investigation conducted in 2013 by the Ministry of Health and Safety in the Netherlands revealed that there were 2044 victims of accidents at work, out of which 60 are deceased. 20 percent of these accidents were related to a fall from height. Injuries from working at height – fatal or non-fatal – happen all the time, including in the painting sector.
Scaffolds: your safe access to height
Scaffolds are a good choice when you need safe access to high walls and ceilings. They are temporary structures that provide a solid work platform, freedom of movement and all-round safety at height.
However, people often think that setting up a scaffold is time-consuming.
What they may not know is that nowadays there are safe scaffolding systems in the market that are easy to assemble and take a lot less time to set up. These are aluminum towers. They work very well for light maintenance work like painting.
Aluminum towers are lightweight and easy to assemble while providing more safety as you would have with other commonly used means of access. For example, a 12-meter tower scaffold only takes about 20 minutes to put together and professional scaffolders are not required on site. These features make the aluminum tower the perfect equipment when you need to move often to different job sites.
Innovation to look for
With the large assortment of scaffolding available, you need to filter your choice by looking into their safety features. An advanced guardrail system with all-round protection should fence your work area before you enter the next level. Putting it up should be fast too, for instance by having integrated more functionalities into one and thus having less parts.
Rethink your safety equipment
The evolution to innovative aluminum towers makes painting at height a lot safer and easier. Next time you go up painting, rethink your equipment – scaffolds need not be the obstruction for doing your job. Most importantly, you should feel confident that you can always safely work up there.
Choose the right tower scaffold and make sure you don’t become a statistic.