Designing Fall-Arrest Harnesses, an Entrepreneur Aims for Safer Dangling Time
Tragedy sparked a new idea about safety for Max Wilhammer, who creates customized fall-protection harnesses including some that provide longer protection for dangling construction workers who have fallen and been saved by their harnesses.
Hanging in a harness after a fall for more than five minutes in an upright posture, with legs relaxed straight beneath the body, can cause serious injury or death, according to Occupational Safety and Health magazine. Wilhammer says that severe injury is possible after eight to 12 minutes. Others have put the time until injury at 14 minutes in a full-body harness.
Wilhammer knows the dangers from personal experience. Twenty-four years ago at age 17, while working as an apprentice painter on the twenty-second floor of a Nashville high-rise, Willhammer found a co-worker hanging from his safety harness. He had fallen from a ladder and was dead.
Wilhammer thought the man, an electrician, had hung himself. “It didn’t make any sense to me,” Willhammer says.
Apparently, the electrician had died after his fall because the straps of his safety harness had acted as tourniquets. The condition, Willhammer later learned, is called orthostatic intolerance. It is the cause of suspension trauma.
In the upright posture with legs immobilized, gravity pulls blood to the legs, cutting the return flow to the heart. With the heart’s output cut, and the heartbeat slowed, too little blood may reach the brain.
Two years later, Willhammer was on the job as a security guard at a powerplant, working seven stories up, when he saw a worker try to adjust a bolt. The worker lost his footing and fell several stories, striking several objects as he fell.
A Vision Is Ignited
Those two accidents ignited a vision in Wilhammer, who started sewing his own safety harnesses, doing the stitch-work in his spare time.
“People shouldn’t die just going to work,” he says.
Now 41, the native of Idaho Falls lives in Burbank, Calif., and is busy promoting his own line of safety harnesses via his company, Willhammer Industries.
In December, the television program "Invention USA" featured his three-piece Air Trek harness. The show’s co-hosts agreed to fund his prototype safety harness, and encouraged him to create a lower-priced version.
He has since created a less expensive version, the Fall Master, which sells for $199.99.
The Fall Master is designed as a safer harness meant to compete with other harnesses now on the market. It includes padded shoulder-blades, a padded back-brace and a tool belt. The harness has both front and rear fall mounts.
Willhammer’s safety harnesses lessens the possibility that the straps, and the pressure they inflect on the human torso, will inflict life-threatening injuries to a dangling worker who’s fallen.
Other companies, such as Capital Safety, also offer safety harnesses designed for enduring long rescue waits, including harnesses with seat slings suited for communications tower work, and some with deployable foot loops for helping prevent suspension trauma.
Wilhammer says he will be taking a different approach. “Capital Safety is a big company with more resources than me so they carry many more products. I am proud that they have been there for workers and have spent time on their new harnesses, but I do not think they see the world with the same eyes.
"I want to offer more unique custom harnesses than any other company, giving the best possible harnesses for the people that need them."
When a worker's fall is arrested, the person will most likely be in pain from muscle trauma, says Wilhammer, if he or she has been using a standard safety harness.
"They will most likely be begging anyone that can to get them down because each minute causes much suffering."
Ben Walsh, former safety officer for Selectbuild Inc., who now works for the state of Idaho, applauds Willhammer’s harnesses. “These harnesses are customized for their specific field of application...[and that's] what set them apart,” Walsh says.
A spokesman for Capital Safety does much more than sell only off-the-shelf products. "We are working in the field with customers on a daily basis and fill thousands of custom orders each year." he says. "We are always talking to customers and then designing solutions to fit their needs."
Man of Many Trades
In his two decades in construction Wilhammer had worked as a painter, carpenter, landscaper, and supervisor of large construction projects.
At 6 ft, 5 in. and 255 lbs, Willhammer had found safety harnesses he had used very uncomfortable with straps that chafe. In creating his own harness, which has its own tool belt built into it, he came to believe that most conventional harnesses have straps that work to pull a worker’s body apart.
So he set out to create a harness that cushioned the body and inflicted no injury when the worker was stranded in a dangling harness waiting to be rescued.
After Willhammer’s invention was featured on Invention USA on the History Channel, he was contacted by the United Steelworkers of America, Shell Oil and Otis Elevator. “Everybody wanted the lighter, cheaper version,” he says.
Harnesses can cost from $160 to $400. At $199.99, Wilhammer's Fall Master weighs just 3.5 pounds, and also has four grooves of webbing loops so a worker who’s fallen can be cut free and lowered down safely. The harness has a seat built into it.
“By putting a seat into the harness, it drops the angle of the leg pads. The back-brace holds the inertia [of a fall], and with the seat it distributes the inertia all over,” Willhammer says.
“They say 15 to 17 people on average die each day from falls in the construction industry,” Willhammer says. Despite having worked construction in more than 20 states, Willhammer never was given any safety harness training. “I think employers should give non-union employees a day of harness training,” Willhammer says.
He has a training video for his harnesses, and is trying to create a national Safety Harness Safety Day. He also is working to get his harness UL listed, although he says it’s already approved by U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the American National Standards Institute.
