The Dangers of Body Belts

The heyday of American skyscraper construction saw the birth of structures that had until that point existed only as engineer’s drawings or in the pages of science fiction novels. With the rapid increase in high-rise construction, however, came a substantial increase in the risk for fall-related injuries and deaths.

The simplest and most straightforward remedy seemed to be the body belt, a broad leather or canvas restraint worn about the midsection. It became clear, however, that even when a body belt worked as intended (arrested an initial fall), it came with its own set of hazards. An unconscious worker could easily slip out of a belt and fall to a lower level; a worker could suffer internal injuries or even death from prolonged suspension and pressure on the internal organs; or a worker could be asphyxiated by a belt that shifted upward from the waist to the armpits, or a worker could invert and strike their head on an object. Despite these risks—and the fact that many workers chose to wear no fall protection gear at all—the body belt went unchallenged for some time.

Early attempts at improving on the belt began with a look at aviation harnesses used by pilots when parachuting. Though heavy and cumbersome for long-term wear, they pointed the way to the modern five-point full-body harness in use today. Still, however, body belts remained the tool of choice during the 1960s through the 1980s.

In 1970, Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, giving centralized power to OSHA to establish binding safety regulations for the workplace. OSHA began investigating the safety of body belts in the 1980s. As an experiment, they asked engineers at Dayton Ohio’s Wright Patterson Airforce Base to estimate survival times for a motionless, unconscious worker suspended by a body belt alone.

“An average-sized woman, they calculated, could live two and a half minutes before dying of asphyxiation or internal injuries caused by the belt. A man would survive for about 32 seconds. In a harness, however, a worker could survive between 19 and 29 minutes.” [Source: http://www.ishn.com/articles/banning-body-belts]

Based on these stark findings, and on the rate of belt-related deaths in the construction industry, OSHA in 1998 banned body belts as a form of personal fall arrest system (although the belts were still permitted for positioning). According to OSHA, “an employee who uses a body belt as a personal fall arrest system is exposed to hazards such as falling out of the belt, serious internal injuries, and technical asphyxiation through prolonged suspension.” [Source: http://www.osha.gov/Region7/fallprotection/fall_protection_info.html]

Today’s full-body harnesses are able to provide full and complete fall protection, and in the event of a fall, reduce the risk for suspension injury or asphyxiation. This means not only a decreased chance for life threatening injury from the fall itself, but also increased time for rescuers to lower the fallen worker safely to the next lower level.

When choosing the right system for your workplace, consult with your distributor representative or manufacturer. They’ll be glad to answer your questions and help you choose the most appropriate equipment to meet your fall protection needs.