No workplace is completely safe from the threat of injury. Even at an office job, workers can fall off of their chairs, trip and hit their heads on the corner of a cubicle or slip on a wet spot while chatting with colleagues next to the water cooler.
However, in comparison to office workers, construction workers face truly deadly risks on a daily basis. As such, they need to stay alert to these risks if they want to get home safe and injury-free from work each day. Here are two of the worst risks that construction workers have to navigate on a daily basis:
Scaffolding injuries
Scaffolds can be anywhere from ten feet height to multiple stories high. When working from such great heights, workers are under the constant risk of falling. Also, because scaffolding are temporary structures that workers construct and deconstruct again and again, these structures suffer a serious beating and their components are subject to wearing out and failing. When you combine the risks of falling off a scaffold and having the scaffold collapse underneath you, it’s easy to see why these devices are so dangerous.
Nevertheless, workers could never complete many construction projects without a scaffolding. Using these devices presents a necessary risk, and construction must exercise extreme care when constructing them, inspecting them and using them on a regular basis.
Falling object injuries
There’s a reason why the iconic image of a construction worker wearing a hard hat is so well known. Falling objects have killed numerous people in and around construction sites. Whether you’re a worker or a visitor to a construction zone, don’t take your chances. Wear your hard hat on the off-chance that someone drops a hammer or piece of construction material from high up above.
Were you hurt while working at a construction job?
Nearly all construction workers benefit from New Jersey’s workers’ compensation insurance program. This means that – no matter how you got hurt – if the injury happened while you were engaged in work activities, you will probably have the ability to get financial compensation to pay for your medical care and the time you have to spend unable to work while recovering from your injuries. In some situations, injured workers may also be able to pursue third-party personal injury claims against at-fault parties that were not their employers.
