Assessment of life saving appliances regulatory requirements — Human factors knowledge gaps
Life saving appliances are used throughout Canada and around the world every day by a large number of individuals who work or travel over open water. Personnel rely on these life saving appliances to help provide protection from harsh environments, and reduce the risk of injury or death in the event of a marine accident. Due to their importance in helping to save lives at sea, life saving appliances are built and tested according to specific standards and regulations to ensure that they provide the level of performance required. Unfortunately, life saving appliances do not always perform as expected which can lead to unexpected injuries or loss of life. Given that life saving appliances must meet specific performance goals as prescribed by standards and regulations, it is often these goals that fall short of what is actually needed during a marine accident. A knowledge gap is created when the testing conditions, as outlined in a standard or regulation, do not accurately reflect those conditions found during a marine accident. As a result, a life saving appliance will often meet performance goals that are below those required to prevent an injury or loss of life during an actual marine accident. The Canadian regulation: “Life Saving Equipment Regulations” C.R.C., c. 1436 was reviewed and possible knowledge gaps with respect to human factors were identified. The goals and requirements for life saving appliances in the regulation were compared against existing work done in the area of marine safety to determine if what was prescribed adequately reflected what could be found during a marine accident. There were many gaps identified in the regulation, commonly caused by prescriptive wording specifying conditions not commonly found during a marine accident. These knowledge gaps will widen as conditions become more severe than what is prescribed in the regulations possibly leading to even further decrease in life saving appliance performance than what is already measured.
Essentials of Sea Survival
Each year, 140,000 water-related deaths occur worldwide. These deaths are rarely true "accidents," because most maritime incidents are caused by lack of preparedness. If you frequently participate in aquatic activities, have you stopped to consider the nature of the threat confronting you? What steps can you take to improve your chances of surviving in the water or on a survival craft? Is your knowledge of the basic principles sufficient to enable you to adapt, improvise, and survive? Reading "Essentials of Sea Survival" prepares you to avoid disaster, even in the worst-case scenario. The book is a compelling, informative, and comprehensive guide to open-water survival. Drawing on historical anecdotes as well as published scientific research, it examines the nature of the many threats confronting the survivor at sea and outlines, in lay terms, the methods you can use to prevent or minimize the dangers. Authors Frank Golden and Michael Tipton are internationally recognized experts in cold-water survival. In "Essentials of Sea Survival" they explain the scientific reasoning behind much of the conventional teaching on open-water survival, dispel many misconceptions about how and why people die at sea, and provide up-to-date information on sustained survival in cold water. The lessons they teach are drawn from classic maritime disasters and personal accounts of near-miraculous survival, as well as carefully controlled laboratory experiments.
Effects of a simulated motion environment upon the physical demands of heavy materials handling operators
Maritime shipping, commercial fishing, passenger and cargo shipping and offshore oil and gas industries are all major contributors to the economies of Atlantic Canada. These industries require workers to perform heavy materials handling under harsh environmental conditions, particularly extreme deck motions. The purpose of this study was to better understand the demands of a moving environment on the ability of a person to perform specific lifting tasks. -- Nineteen healthy male subjects volunteered for this study. Each subject was required to lift a 15 kg load under four lifting conditions. While performing these lifting tasks, a ship's motion simulator was used to create deck motions under foot. Three deck motions were considered: pitch, quartering and roll. A stable laboratory condition was also collected for all lifting conditions. Electromyography (EMG) histories of four muscles (erector spinae, latissimus dorsi, external oblique and trapezius) were collected bilaterally and thoracolumbar kinematics was measured throughout the experimental protocol. -- A repeated measures ANOVA was employed to assess trunk motions and muscle activities across the lifting and motion conditions. There were no significant differences found due to the motion effect for any of the muscles monitored in this study. However, the lifting task did produce differences in the EMG activities for some muscles. The maximal sagittal velocities were significantly smaller for all motion states in comparison to the stable lab condition (p≤0.01) while maximum twisting and lateral bending velocities increased in the motion conditions compared to the stable lab condition (p≤0.05). Results suggest that working in a moving environment will likely increase the operator's risk for overexertion injuries, particularly to the spine.