The other day I read about how a certain BC utility company makes safety a priority with their employees. This unto itself isn’t surprising, but when I say employees, I mean all employees. This includes the ones working outside in possible harm’s way and the hundreds of workers in offices with job titles that suggest paper cuts would be the most gruesome of injuries they could be exposed to. In reality, office work can have serious health problems especially if your environment isn’t ergonomically sound. Just ask anyone with carpal tunnel syndrome.

This company even discusses how employees can prevent injuries! The name of this company isn’t important. What’s important is the desire for safety to be the responsibility of everyone in the company.

Seeing how progressive this company is with safety concerns got me thinking about my exposure to safety measures at work. Rather, it’s more accurate to say safety messages my employers didn’t exposed me to.

When I was a gawky teen, I did pretty much any job that paid more than the last. I really don’t remember any concerted efforts to try to steer me from danger.

I recall working at a gas station and being asked to fill someone’s car with propane. Wanting to please the boss on my first day of work, I said I was fine to do so thinking, “How different can this be from pumping regular gas into cars?” It’s a lot different actually. While the liquid gradually filled the tank, I realized my hands had frozen into claw-like objects. I didn’t know you needed gloves to properly handle this amazingly cold substance that can cause frostbite quite quickly. I did manage to finish filling up the car, but I couldn’t feel my hands for about ten minutes.

Having worked at a large Canadian media outlet for a few years, I remember someone mentioning a safety document but was never actually told I had to know anything or even read anything to do with any sort of safety at the workplace.

Hell, I don’t even know if I could find the first-aid kit or if one even existed, let alone know what to do in case of a fire.

When I watch large-scale disasters on TV news like floods, fires, earthquakes, and the like, I sometimes think what I would do if one of those situations happened to me in Vancouver. If at home I’d know what to do, but at work, I can honestly say I have no plan.

Personally, I’d like to have a plan for dealing with injuries or disasters at work. Maybe I should make one.

 

Tell me, does your workplace have a plan to prevent injuries?

 

I recently befriended a nice fella named Jan. He’s into graphic design and has been known to collect the odd plastic novelty toy. Hailing from the Czech Republic, the 30-year-old came to Vancouver at age 11 and is one of those annoying Europeans whose English is better than many native speakers.

He gave me a questioning look when I asked him about any formal safety education he may have been taught in the Czech Republic. He does remember a once-a-year bomb drill where everyone went to the school basement and tried on gas masks.

Like Natasha who I interviewed for a previous blog, Jan doesn’t remember having to wear a seatbelt when he was in a car with his parents. In fact, he doesn’t remember seatbelts even being in cars.

As for his parents’s direction in the safety department, “They weren’t overhanded (with safety prevention), Jan told me.

 

“I think they let us explore quite a bit, so the minor stuff like using a knife meant letting us get nicked a few times. This was part of the learning process for us.”

In Canada, he says he learned more about safety from experience than through school, friends, or television.

While riding a bike quickly down a street without a helmet, he was once pulled over by the police and asked why he wasn’t wearing one. Despite the incident, Jan hasn’t invested in a helmet of any kind yet.

“I still bike without a helmet, but its more recreational biking along the sea wall,” the relaxed Jan told me; however, he followed up with, “I know I should wear one.”

Jan has never broken a body part before. This speaks to his conscientious nature but also speaks to his reluctance to not wear a helmet. He told me that if he had ever injured himself riding his bike, skate boarding, or skiing, he might actually put a helmet on.

To get around the possible dangerous of riding a bike in traffic, Jan takes the bus instead. He says he’s seen too many near accidents between bikes and cars to want to ride in traffic. As a pedestrian, he’s vigilant about his safety, but he’s not so sure of others.

“If you’re a pedestrian in Amsterdam, you have to watch out for bikes and cars. There’s definitely a hierarchy in Europe, and pedestrians are at the bottom of it.”

Jan went on to tell me,

“I don’t know if it’s a Canadian or North American phenomenon, but I think overall people here assume that other people will look out for them. I think in Europe they’re more conscious of themselves (in traffic). The boundaries are more established. In Prague, even if you’re walking in a crosswalk, you know the car may not stop for you. Here I see people getting off the bus, and immediately they jump into the street.”

Jan comments made me think about my attitudes about how traffic is supposed to work. I have found myself more than once stepping into traffic relying on the car speeding towards me to stop.

As a pedestrian or cyclist what’s your attitude towards safety in traffic?

 

 

Despite the lack of snow on local mountains like Cypress, I’ve received a few e-mails and photos sent from friends’ cell phones bragging about being on the slopes with their skis and snowboards. Myself, I’m itching to feel the cold on my face and the white stuff under my board.

When I was younger, helmets were only common on little squirts snowplowing down bunny hills. About eight years ago, when I made the switch to snowboarding, I, like those fearless tikes, wore a helmet because I was learning the sport. I didn’t want to risk getting that dreaded concussion my friends warned me of due to the fact that I’d likely be falling backwards a lot when I caught an edge. Even if I’m no longer a beginner, when I do board, I still wear a helmet. I really don’t have any reason not to.

Blogging about wearing helmets on the slopes is nothing new, especially on preventable.ca. But when you look at statistics like the ones below, it’s hard to ignore that much needless harm on the hills could be avoided. This is why we've started our latest campaign (see picture) trying to raise awareness about wearing helmets when you're on the slopes

SNOWBOARDING AND SKIING INJURY FACTS

•    Traumatic head injury is the leading cause of death among skiers and snowboarders (Smartrisk, 2009).

•    Helmets have been linked to a 60% reduction in head injuries for skiers and snowboarders (Smartrisk, 2009).

•    Each year, BC Children’s has about 90 visits to the Emergency Department because of snowboard injuries, and  over  50 visits related to downhill skiing (CHIRPP).

•    Each year, there are over 900 skiing and snowboarding injuries, among all ages, that require hospitalization (BCIRPU).

If you’re now a helmet convert and want to pick one up before you shred (or whatever they call it now) then here are some tips:

HELMETS

•    Check for the safety sticker inside: CE/ASTM/SNELL (They are currently in the process of developing CSA certified ski/snowboard helmets).

•    Some helmets are multi-impact and some are single impact. Read the instructions for when to discard your helmet.

•    Helmet should fit, such that one finger fits between the chin and strap and there are 2 fingers distance from the helmet to the brow. Helmet should be snug and comfortable.

•    Only use approved ski/snowboard helmets. Other helmets such as bicycle helmets are designed to take impact differently and offer different areas of protection.

I’ve heard the reasons people give for not wearing helmets on the hills. But what I’d like to know is, if you are a helmet wearer on the slopes, and someone you care for isn’t, do you try to convince them to follow your example?

 

 

 

When you do something long enough, you tend to forget what it was like learning how to do it in the first place. Months ago, when I wrote my first blog for Preventableca, I had a rudimentary understanding of what preventable injuries were and how they could be avoided. After months of blogging about helmets, medications, Sudoku, and Christmas lights, I now feel like the poster boy for preventable injuries.

But a comment made about our most recent campaign on another Vancouver blog got me thinking about our approach to safety and its effect. In December a handful of my fellow Vancouver area bloggers came together to chat about this blog and our campaign about wearing helmets on ski hills. Arguably one of the most popular Vancouver bloggers Miss 604 blogged about our helmet campaign, and one of her followers questioned how effective the message, “You probably won’t need a helmet today” is in trying to raise awareness about head injuries on the slopes.

The Community Against Preventable Injuries responded that,

“We know that most people know how to prevent injuries. The problem is that most people continue to take risks believing that, ‘It won’t happen to me.’”

The Community’s response went on to explain how our approach is to encourage discussion, not tell people what to do. And that, “If we’ve made someone consider their possibly dangerous behaviours for the first time in their life, even if most people don’t immediately change their ways, we’ve made progress in preventing needless injuries in the future.”

This questioning of our methods is part of the dialogue we want to promote on the issue of preventable injuries. It seems to me that dangerous habits are often either not talked about or are simply given lip service.

This got me thinking about how people communicate about preventable injuries in their lives, if at all. Is it parents giving their children the morning mantra, “Look both ways before you cross the street”? Is it discussions around dinner tables about the new electronic device ban in vehicles? Or is it campaigns like our and others that hopefully make people think about what they do?

It’s time to join the discussion. How do you persuade those in your life to be safe? 

 

It can be argued that the term “multiculturalism” has become synonymous with the word “Canada.” When we pair the term with the word “Metro Vancouver,” multiculturalism almost seems redundant. There are people from all over the world living in Vancouver. With so many people bringing their unique histories and backgrounds to one place, there comes different ways of seeing the world, including different priories and opinions.

When it comes to safety, not only is there a difference of attitudes between cultures, there’s a difference in attitudes even between people within and between any given culture. Take Cary (not her real name) for example:

Cary is 27 and came to Canada from Beijing, China, at the age of five. For the most part, I’d say she is a very safety-conscious person. She’s a careful and responsible driver. She doesn’t bike much now, but when she was young, she always wore a helmet when she rode. When she does take medicine, she reads the labels and is careful not to mix pills without double -checking that they’re safe.

Her parents, Cary says, are also safety conscious. But she suggests that people who come here from China have different attitudes when it comes to safety.

 “In China there just aren’t any safety regulations. Even now there just aren’t those kinds of rules. People have their own sense of what it takes to be safe.”

Cary went on to tell me that back home,

 “They’re not used to government control of smaller things like safety. When you’re coming into Canada, there’s no manual that tells you what to do. They learn from reading newspapers and speaking to people.”

When I asked her how people in China determine how they’ll be more safe in their lives, she told me that people determine what’s dangerous by reading and hearing about tragedies in the media or from people around them, not through any formal safety education or awareness campaigns.

From my interview with Cary I learned that she formed her attitudes on safety by combining her parents examples with safety leasons she learned at school. Speaking to Cary made me thing about how Canadian culture itself shapes how safe we are.

One possibly unsafe thing Cary does in her life is ski without a helmet. She learned to ski in Canada, but when I told her that Intrawest ski hills recommend that all skiers on their hills wear a helmet, she told me that she never really thought about it. “I’ve always thought of myself as a low-key recreational skier”, said Cary.

“It’s different when you ski, you usually fall sideways, which isn’t as dangerous.”

All this safety and culture talk has me wondering, are your attitudes on safety shaped by your cultural background, Canadian culture, both, or neither?

Now that the World Junior Hockey Championship is over (sorry to reopen that wound hockey lovers), Canadians can shift their focus back to the NHL.

One player that’s been in the news for not-so-positive reasons this season is Pascal Leclaire. The Ottawa Senator goaltender has recently returned from a month off his skates. In November Leclaire fractured his cheekbone when a puck struck him in the face while he was sitting on the bench during a game. The human puck target may be injured again, but that’s beside the point.

I know that from time to time a player has to take a slug of water from their water bottle. And for a goaltender, that means raising his mask to get hydrated. But Leclair said he was, “…just chit chatting” to his trainer when the puck hit him, suggesting that he had his face exposed for a while.

When I played hockey in my youth, we had to wear cages on our helmets to protect our faces. Sure we opened them up from time to time, but we’d get a harsh reprimand from the coach if we kept it open for much longer than a few seconds. 

Leclaire’s injury was not a common one in professional hockey. However, it could be argued that Leclaire’s injury did more than damage himself and his career temporarily; it set the example that you don’t have to wear protective equipment if you don’t want to.

If professionals don’t wear helmets during a game, why should junior players?

Do you think the attitudes of NHL hockey players towards safety influences how youngsters view their own safety on the ice?

 

I’ve received a few e-mails and photos sent from friends’ cell phones bragging about being on the slopes with their skis and snowboards this holiday season. Myself, I’m itching to feel the cold on my face and the white stuff under my board before the end of the decade.

When I was younger, helmets were only common on little squirts snowplowing down bunny hills. About eight years ago, when I made the switch to snowboarding, I, like those fearless tikes, wore a helmet because I was learning the sport. I didn’t want to risk getting that dreaded concussion my friends warned me of due to the fact that I’d likely be falling backwards a lot when I caught an edge. Even if I’m no longer a beginner, when I do board, I still wear a helmet. I really don’t have any reason not to.

Blogging about wearing helmets on the slopes is nothing new, especially on preventable.ca. But when you look at statistics like the ones below, it’s hard to ignore that much needless harm on the hills could be avoided. This is why we've started our latest campaign (see picture) trying to raise awareness about wearing helmets when you're on the slopes

SNOWBOARDING AND SKIING INJURY FACTS

•    Traumatic head injury is the leading cause of death among skiers and snowboarders (Smartrisk, 2009).

•    Helmets have been linked to a 60% reduction in head injuries for skiers and snowboarders (Smartrisk, 2009).

•    Each year, BC Children’s has about 90 visits to the Emergency Department because of snowboard injuries, and  over  50 visits related to downhill skiing (CHIRPP).

•    Each year, there are over 900 skiing and snowboarding injuries, among all ages, that require hospitalization (BCIRPU).

If you’re now a helmet convert and want to pick one up before you shred (or whatever they call it now) then here are some tips:

HELMETS

•    Check for the safety sticker inside: CE/ASTM/SNELL (They are currently in the process of developing CSA certified ski/snowboard helmets).

•    Some helmets are multi-impact and some are single impact. Read the instructions for when to discard your helmet.

•    Helmet should fit, such that one finger fits between the chin and strap and there are 2 fingers distance from the helmet to the brow. Helmet should be snug and comfortable.

•    Only use approved ski/snowboard helmets. Other helmets such as bicycle helmets are designed to take impact differently and offer different areas of protection.

I’ve heard the reasons people give for not wearing helmets on the hills. But what I’d like to know is, if you are a helmet wearer on the slopes, and someone you care for isn’t, do you try to convince them to follow your example?

 

 

 

 

If you’re reading this and walked through snow when you left your home or business this morning, then you might have to pay a price for doing so. As of 10 AM the day after a snowfall, Vancouverites who haven‘t cleaned their sidewalks in front of their residences and businesses could pay up to $2000 dollars! That cost doesn’t include the physical hardship of slipping on your icy driveway. With a mix of rain and snow this week in Metro Vancouver, it’s wise to be careful on sidewalks and to keep them clear to avoid injury.

Now before you rush home to find that shovel, stop, and take a breath. Believe it or not, shoveling snow can take its toll on your body, especially if you live in an area that was covered with substantial amounts of snow overnight. Shoveling incorrectly can hurt your back and even lead to a heart attack. A couple of tips are to bend your knees and take breaks. And if you really want to make shoveling easier, you might want to invest in one of these new shovels invented by a couple of Northern BC brothers.

Now that we have our first good snowfall of the year, have you thought about your shoveling technique?

 

 

We label them as unexpected, out of the blue, and surprising. We’ve all had freak “accidents” before. We often call them accidents because it’s usually a nicer and less accusatory way to not assess blame. This is particularly true when someone hurts him/herself in an embarrassing way. I’m thinking about the old rake-in-the-face or tripping-over-your-feet kind of embarrassing.

Often we can laugh about these sorts of things or try to cover them up. Who hasn’t strutted out of a near face plant in plain view of spectators before? Ok, maybe I shouldn’t speak for others, but try it sometime. If people don’t believe that you meant to lurch forward suddenly, then transition into a John Travolta disco strut afterwards. It will at least get a few laughs. 

But freak injuries aren’t always funny. Sometimes people aren’t lucky enough to survive the unexpected.

This could have been the case for accomplished drummer Jerry Fuchs. Why he decided to jump into or out of a malfunctioning elevator and not wait for help we may never know. 

Even more tragic is the recent case of a young boy falling to his death at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. This situation is one people might imagine but would rarely expect to happen.

As mentioned in my last post, Attitudes on Safety #2, sometimes we knowlingly do things that are unsafe. But other times injuries happen when we least expect them. Although stories like Fuchs’ and the young boy’scan be depressing, they can also be helpful in warning others to be aware of comparable dangers if they find themselves in similar circumstances.

What’s your most freakish injury? How could you have avoided it?

 

 

When I last blogged on this subject, my interviewee made an interesting point about how culture relates to safety. He said that while in Europe he, “…noticed fewer people wearing bike helmets compared to here. The [European] drivers have been taught how to drive around vehicles”. Whether that statement is true or not is up for debate. However, the idea that culture contributes to your attitudes on safety is one that I thought about when I was interviewing Natasha.

Natasha came to Canada from the United Arab Emirates when she was six years old. In UAE, she rem embers being taught about fire prevention in school but not much else regarding safety. Shortly after arriving in Canada, Natasha remembered her mother telling her, “If you’re in the back seat [of a car], you don’t have to wear a seatbelt, but if you’re in the front seat, then you have to wear one, or you’ll get a ticket.” When in Asia, Natasha said, seat belts weren’t really, “on the radar.”

“Bike helmets are a new thing for me”, says Natasha. She bought her first one in her 20s. When I asked her why she eventually bought one, she replied, “The older you get, the more accidents you hear about, so the more real it feels. As a kid, it just never felt real.”

But her story about roller blading might give more insight into why she’s so adamant about wearing a helmet today.

“When I started roller bladding in my early 20s, I roller bladed to work. I remember a manager telling me, ‘You should really wear a helmet and knee pads when you roller blade’. I was like, ‘No way’. Helmets weren’t really part of my reality. Then I was hit by a car on my way to work. I broke my ankle, and I had to have surgery. I never roller bladed again.”

Natasha says she feels naked without her helmet while riding her bike. But she did tell me that she’s naturally impulsive and is always in a hurry. She thrives on being efficient, and she knows that cutting corners can put her in harms way.

Her answers to my questions suggest that her attitudes on safety are mostly based on her personality and experience. But it’s hard to deny that her unique cultural upbringing could have played a significant part in her attitudes towards safety today.

Now I’d like to know about your story. How were your attitudes on safety formed?