Episode Transcript
Kirk: Welcome to Talk the TAUC, where labor and management meet to move union construction forward. I’m Kirk Westwood.
Our guest today is Dr. Barry Miller from the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab, which just released the first ever safety ratings for construction helmets, adapting its well-known STAR methodology from sports to real world construction falls. These ratings were developed with industry partners, including the Association of Union Constructors to help contractors and tradespeople choose head protection that actually reduces injury risk on site.
Dr. Miller, thank you so much for joining us.
Barry: Hey, thanks for having me.
Kirk: It’s been a while. Today, we just want to update people on the Virginia Tech study, and we’ll probably ask some of the same questions from our first episode of talking a little about the Virginia Tech Lab, but we really want to hear about all the things you guys have found on construction helmets over the last several months to years that you guys have been studying those. But before we get started, as we did last time, I’m curious. Have you had any fun, interesting songs stuck in your head of late?
Barry: Well, we just hired a new football coach here at Virginia Tech, James Franklin from Penn State. So Enter Sandman’s been running through my mind. Here we go. New era.
Kirk: There are worse things to have stuck in your head than Enter Sandman.
Barry: That’s right. It’s fun, so good stuff.
Kirk: Okay, so give us the headline. What did Virginia Tech just publish, and what problem were you trying to solve for construction?
Barry: The official ratings came out on (I think) September 22nd. The biggest takeaway (I think) is that there’s a big difference between Type I helmets and Type II helmets when it comes to concussion and skull fracture risk.
If you’re exposed to falls from ladders or scaffolding, it’d be pretty wise to choose a Type II helmet. For one, those helmets stay on your head because they have a chin strap. Then the Type II helmets also have peripheral padding. What the data tells us is if you switch to those, you can reduce your concussion risk by about 35%, skull fracture risk by 66%. And if you go to one of the best-performing Type II helmets, those numbers go up to reduction in risk by 47% for concussion, and 75% for skull fractures. That’s huge.
Kirk: Just for clarity, is that compared to wearing nothing or compared to wearing a Type I?
Barry: Compared to a Type I.
Kirk: Wow.
Barry: Exactly, that’s a huge difference. The Type I helmets don’t have any peripheral padding, and therefore they don't attenuate a lot of energy from falls and maybe struck by objects. So yeah, moving to a Type II helmet, again, it’ll stay on your head because it has a chin strap, but then it has peripheral padding that really reduces the risk of concussion and skull fracture, which is good to know. If you’re making decisions, if you’re the safety department for a company or whatnot, these are strong considerations based on the type of work you’re doing.
Kirk: Your press materials emphasized that your ratings are built on job site fall scenarios, not the vertical top impacts. What impacts did you test, and how does that reflect severe but survivable construction accidents?
Barry: We looked at the OSHA injury reports over 600. Any fall videos that we had, survey information. These accident scenarios aren’t easy to capture. There’s not a lot of video. It’s not like you’re watching a football game, everything’s videotaped and you can really determine what happens. So we do the best we can.
The OSHA reports basically said that 50% of the falls are below 14 feet and 50% above 14 feet. Then the 85th percentile was about 25 feet. Those are the falls we decided to model.
I should point out that when you fall from 14 feet, that doesn’t mean you’re falling 14 feet directly onto your head because you have basically fall mitigating strategies is what we call those. You’re going to put your arm out, you elbow out, you’re going to sacrifice your shoulder before you hit your head.
With these, the energy impacts we use turn into about a 5½-foot fall directly onto your head, and maybe a 7-foot fall directly on your head. Those are still severe but certainly survivable, especially if you have a high quality Type II helmet on.
Kirk: I hope other people are curious, the same thing. Fourteen feet, you’re up on scaffolding. Is the 14 feet from your head to the ground or from your feet to the ground as you’re measuring what a 14-foot fall would be?
Barry: I’m pretty sure it’s from where your head is. Maybe you’re on a six foot ladder in your head roughly 14 feet or so, or a little bit lower, depending on what rung you’re on.
Kirk: So 14-foot fall for a 6-foot person. If it’s from your head, you might. Okay, that makes a lot more sense or good clarity.
Barry: Then if you looked at our test methodology, if you go to the webpage, you would see that we drop a safety helmet in with a head form from about 5½ feet, and then the higher energy is about 7 feet, to give us the appropriate velocities that would be attained from falling from those heights. That’s how all that was determined.
Kirk: You said with a head form—this is more just more personal curiosity for me—is this a full crash test dummy or is it truly just a head with a helmet on it that you’re testing?
Barry: We use just a [...] head form, 50th percentile male human head. The helmet sits with the head form on a halo and the halo actually drops and goes around a steel anvil to simulate our impact surface. That impact surface is about 25 degrees with sandpaper because surface friction makes a huge difference in how your head’s going to respond. Most of the accidents we found are on concrete. We tested on other surfaces, but yeah, 80 grit sandpaper pretty much best simulates concrete, so that’s what we used.
People might ask, well why an angled anvil? Well when you fall, you’re not completely vertical. You fall and you’re moving away, you’re trying to save your head from hitting first, so you’re probably going to hit it from some angle. We determine 25 degrees is a pretty good representation of the falls we modeled.
Kirk: Now, can you walk us through the average, the reductions in prediction, concussion, and skill fracture risk? When workers move from Type I to Type II, what are the top performers achieved?
Barry: If you went from a basic one STAR Type I helmet to a top tier five STAR helmet, concussion risk is reduced by 47%. This is probably more important, skull fracture risk is reduced by about 75%. So you’re going home to your family more than likely.
I should also point out that new prototypes are already in the lab. This was the initial step. Now that the company has a design tool, because we share the test protocol which represents real world accident scenarios, we’re already getting prototypes in here, they’re going to do better than the number one-rated helmet right now.
A variety of material structures, it’s going to change. It’s going to evolve, which is great for the industry. We see this in all the other sport helmets that we cover. You’ll see an evolution of helmet performance here really quick.
Kirk: You guys have said that you recommend four- and five-STAR models for workers that are exposed to fall risks. How do you determine what the threshold is? Obviously four is better than one, but what is the determining factor of the threshold?
Barry: We look at all the helmets. At the end we look at the STAR scores. When you look at these, we rank/order them by STAR score.
STAR score for construction helmets represents both concussion, the number of concussions we’d expect to see, and the number of skull fractures we’d expect to see from our test protocol. Obviously, a lower number is better. As those numbers come out, basically we look at them and say, oh, well here’s natural breaks.
I think Steve also uses some statistical model like, all right, what’s the 75%, et cetera, top 75% or 25%. Those get broken down based on how the helmets perform. It’s not predetermined. It’s after we do all the testing and then we see how it shakes out.
Kirk: We are not being promotional here at all, I’m not looking for a commercial, but what models really stood out? Were there any really top brands or styles? Obviously the Type II in general, but were there any top contenders?
Barry: If you looked at the helmet ratings, you’ll see we initially rated 17 helmets. We’ve already added some and (I guess) we got more coming out here soon. But I think the Milwaukee tool BOLT came out on top. Actually two of them, but the Studson, DeWalt, the KASK Zenith II, pretty close. Those were all bunched together and those were all five STAR. The PIP Traverse MIPS was up in there.
Then there’s a break to the four tier. I think 50% are four STAR or better. I think it was what Steve was shooting for. Then that was the statistical model he used to differentiate them. But the STAR score drives everything.
So if you really want to know and make some comparisons, the STAR score is really what you look at. The 5, 4, 3, 2 number of STARs is for convenience and quick assessment.
Obviously, we would hope that most helmets move to the five STAR category, and then at some point maybe we’ll have to rescale those to differentiate helmet performance. But this is where we are now currently.
Kirk: So beyond the brands, were there any particular design cues that safety directors could look at for evaluating helmets? Like which ones have liners or energy management tech, fit systems or… What were the design features that stood out?
Barry: Most of the helmets have expanded polystyrene foam, better known as EPS, but there’s a wave cell, there’s choroid, there are other materials out there that are going to be incorporated here pretty quickly. 3D printed lattice structures. Again, I think we’re just at the beginning of this evolution.
EPS, I found this out from a company director that used to work for Hydro Flask. They make insulated cups for coffee and things. He said, the best thing to do for insulation is it’s airtight, vacuum packed. Then the next best thing is these air gel pellets. He goes, the third best insulator is EPS (expanded foam).
If you’re wearing that in a helmet, no wonder it might get a little hot because it’s a great insulator. That’s the complaint we “hear” out there that the Type II helmets are hot compared to Type I because they have padding, but there are other structures that might be better ventilation than EPS. Again, we’ll see how it goes.
From our perspective, usually what we say is impact performance is generally determined by the density and thickness of the padding materials, whatever they are. If it’s the right density, that’s number one. Then is it thick enough? You don’t want the padding to bottom out during an impact. Those are the keys.
It’s easy for us to say because we just test and evaluate. The helmet companies are the ones that have to figure out, oh, what should we use? What’s the density? What’s the thickness, what’s the geometry? Geometry might make a difference too of the structure because it might have the ability to deform in a wider variety of directions and energy levels. That’s for them to figure out. That’s basically our assessment.
Kirk: After our first interview back at the very beginning of this line of testing, after that, I’m in the army reserve and I’m a public affairs officer. I had an opportunity to go up and tour the Natick Soldier Center in Massachusetts. I got to walk through their helmet lab. Actually, I asked them about you guys. I was like, have you guys worked with Virginia Tech? And they’re like, not directly, but we certainly know some people over there and vice-versa.
Like you were talking about the 3D printed honeycomb structures and lattice structures, I got to hold some and watch some of their testing, what they’re doing with the ballistic style and military style helmets. It gave me a lot of more direct respect for what you guys are going through and doing, just watching them, everything from bullets to falls to shrapnel, from heat to… It is a very interesting process that you just don’t think about all the science that goes into. You have to wear it, so it has to be comfortable.
Barry: If you look at some of the top performing football helmets and go to their webpages, you’ll see all kinds of advanced technology. And the materials they use, I think something can be gleaned from that. That’s the most advanced sport helmet on the market, American football. I think there are things you can glean from that and incorporate into safety helmets.
They might get a little bit heavier, but over time it’s probably okay if it’s going to provide a lot more protection. It just depends on what work you are doing, do you need that, and there might be different layers or different models based on the work you do. And hopefully no one falls. Hopefully, they’re safer, you got fall protection and other things. But unfortunately, accidents do happen. Never know when you’re going to hit your head, so it’s best to have the best protection.
Kirk: At least from our perspective, this particular study had a lot of industry participation, and a lot of people reaching out like please study this. Obviously, we helped contribute as well. Who are the big people that really brought this to life and made this study possible?
Barry: The JRGF Foundation, American Society of Concrete Contractors, Electric International, and Association of Union Constructors.
Kirk: Well, on behalf of TAUC, we are so proud to have been able to help fund the work. Earlier you were talking about how you were watching lots of videos of, or as much as you could get in reading OSHA reports. How did that affect the testing you did, and how does the testing you did on these helmets compared to the testing of Type I’s, that is from my understanding mostly protection against things falling on your head?
Barry: Really want to study how people get injured in the real world. We wanted our test protocol to best represent those real world accident scenarios. We weren’t really necessarily thinking about Type I or Type II. It’s like what does the worker need to be protected from? Those fall scenarios that we modeled 14 feet and 25 feet determined how we’re going to test the helmets.
We didn’t really think that we don’t take the standard into consideration, and they have different reasons for the tests they do, but this is what we did and we focused on falls at this point in time.
We’d love to add struck by an object moving forward. We can always add that to the test protocol. We’ve already got a proposal out there with the major orgs to see if they would want us to pursue that as well, whether it’s an I-beam, something falling from above. Those are different injury scenarios and we would like to include those. This is just the beginning, but trips and falls account for most of the injuries in the construction industry.
Kirk: I know a lot of it is tradition or the style or the look, but there’s been a lot of pushback in various pockets of the industry that are waiting to make that transition from Type I to Type II helmets. What advice would the data show about making that switch? Outside of just the numbers of how much safer they are, what tips do you have for procurement training, getting the best helmet, how to wear it correctly, what retention systems, things like that?
Barry: Comfort’s going to be important, but moving to a Type II if you’re exposed to falls is (I think) critical. The data says it all that these reductions are significant. But I think all the manufacturers are, like I said, we got all kinds of prototypes in here. They’re going to get better and better.
I think as a procurement officer, using our ratings page as a guide might give you some insight into what we might want to do. I don’t know about all the attachments and some of these helmets have those kinds of things that I’m not aware of. It’s a start. It’s not the end-all-be-all, but I think using our ratings to make an informed decision is pretty important.
Kirk: Now you’ve touched on this a few different times, but what’s next? Is it more styles of helmet, more technology of helmet, or more brands, more impacts? What’s the proposal for the next thing?
Barry: The STAR ratings are in perpetuity. As new commercial models become available, we’ll test rate and post them to the website. But as far as future developments, once we do the research on maybe struck by object, we’ll incorporate that into the current STAR rating protocol. Then either we back test the helmets that are already on there or we completely start over and add that protocol along with what we’ve already done.
That’s the beauty of our STAR rating is we evolve. We’re not so static like some of the standards that take lots and lots of data before they move. If there’s data that says hey, we should include this or consider this, we can modify and move forward. That’s basically how the process works.
We have lots of helmets to do. Obviously, we couldn’t do them all to launch the ratings. We’ll continue to buy 6–7 commercially available models that we’re either in the process of getting tested or just waiting in the testing queue. We’re a busy lab
Kirk: Just closing up and this question’s just for fun, was there anything really surprising or fun or interesting, or what was the coolest didn’t-see-that-coming moment, or was there any standout anecdotes you have to share for this project?
Barry: I think one of the biggest surprises we had was how variable these helmets are for a given test. Moving the helmet just the slightest different way just outside a dot that big, to that big differences based on the locations, the plastic shells, the relatively small amount of padding compared to bike helmets, equestrian helmets, and snow sport helmets.
We had to be extremely precise and figure out how we're going to standardize. All helmets fit a little bit differently, model A to model B, and the way you wear it. We had to really standardize on our head form with using lasers to try to lock in and be as precise as possible. But the helmets in general are pretty variable.
Again, I think it’s just because they don’t have tons of padding, the plastic shells are thin, and the suspension system, the way they operate they decouple really easily. You put on a football helmet, and football helmets still decouple from your head, but they’re pretty tight, so you might get a little movement.
Whereas a construction helmet or Type I or Type II, they move pretty easily so they decouple pretty easily when you hit your head. That plays into how the head responds. You’d prefer the helmet move independently before it takes your head with it as it absorbs energy too. We saw a lot of variability that we had to really lock in and redo our whole test setup, so lots of testing.
They interviewed us when the orgs were out here two weeks ago, and they said, Barry, how do you know what you did was right? I was trying to think of a sophisticated answer. But the answer is this: we test, we look at the results, we strategically test based on those, we analyze that data.
This process was iterative. Probably 15–20 iterations to get it right. So we keep doing it until we’re pretty confident that our protocols for one, representative, and maybe two, just as important, is it repeatable? Can we repeat this and be consistent? If we test helmet A over and over, do we get similar results? We don’t want it to be variable when we put it through our test protocol. That’s the answer. We test and retest.
Kirk: That’s fantastic. Again, now we’ve gotten through all the science. Now I just have all of the just fun jackass questions. Do you have any idea how many helmets you went through? How many helmets were destroyed in the making of this process?
Barry: I would say upwards of 700.
Kirk: Oh geez.
Barry: Yeah. When we do the test protocol, we ask for 15 samples for one model. For other sports we can test the helmet in multiple locations without getting results from the previous test interfering with the new one. But we didn’t find that. So we have to, one fresh helmet every single impact, and there are 12 test conditions.
It’s a lot of helmets, which is unfortunate for the carbon footprint, but that’s what it takes to make sure that we’re getting accurate results. For example for bike helmets, we just have to move about 10 centimeters away from the previous impact location, so it doesn’t have any effects on the next test [...] quite a bit thicker so that’s part of it.
It takes a lot of helmets we burned through, lots of hours. Dr. Mark Begonia, our director of testing, well he was pulling his hair off, so we had to test, retest, like oh my, why are we getting so much variability? We started using the laser system to position the helmets on the head form. We did impact surfaces, different in ones, different angles, different velocities, different helmet models, all to try to standardize all these things. So it was a lot of work, it was a big lift.
Kirk: Getting serious again real quick, as you’ve said variability a few times, you’ve answered this a little bit, I just want to clarify. The variability you guys found in the tests, would those be replicative of people wearing the helmets differently or people falling differently? Is that variability something that people need to worry about to make sure you’re wearing the helmet correctly, et cetera?
Barry: To get the repeatability, we had to really standardize how we’re going to fit the helmet on our head form. As I mentioned, slight differences in where that helmet’s hit makes a difference. But we can’t test every possible scenario, but it may perform differently depending on if you have it tilted up, tilted down, little rotated, and it’s almost impossible to account for all those variations.
It might matter, but yeah, it just depends on the model, how you have it, how you’re wearing it, the suspension system. There are numerous factors that go in that, that you can’t really explain them all.
Kirk: We actually have a guest coming in a few weeks. Ike Pritchett. Do you know the name Ike Pritchett?
Barry: No.
Kirk: He is a superintendent out of Kansas City, and he has a talk he gives on how a new Type II saved his life. He’ll be a guest at our state of the union conference here in December. He is also coming on the podcast where he made the switch over to the Type II reluctantly as often do, and he didn’t even fall. It was an impact. He shows the MRIs and the different things that happen to him, and there’s no way he should be alive, but the helmet really did come through for him.
I know what you guys are doing is great work and I think the helmets are the future. I’m really excited to talk to you again in a year or two when the next line of testing is done.
Barry: Just keep checking the website, make sure you refresh your browser because we’ll keep adding helmet models as we proceed, as the market gets them tested. The queue’s long right now, but we’ll keep working at it. So thanks for having us and we look forward to [...] industry.
Kirk: Absolutely. Thank you so much. You guys are coming to speak at our STUC conference as well. I believe you have someone coming out. Is that you?
Barry: December 8th or 9th?
Kirk: December 10th.
Barry: I think that’s Steve. Dr. Rosen’s going to be there for that one. I’m going to Austin for the major safety summit. I don’t know if that’s you guys or MCAA or a combination of everybody.
Kirk: That one’s the combination of everyone, and that one’s in January. We’re looking forward to seeing you there. But yeah, ours is on December 10th. Either way, to the listeners, whether you can come to our STUC event or to the major safety summit in January in Austin, I’d love to hear more about all of this. Thank you so much for joining us.
Barry: You guys are welcome. Thanks for having us.
Kirk: Dr. Miller. Thank you just so much for joining us and walking us through these numbers in the real world. For our listeners, we’ll link the Virginia Tech press release as well as our last episode with Dr. Barry Miller when we first introduced this study from last year. We’ll link to the ratings page and a few trade press summaries in the show notes.
If you’re considering an upgrade, look for 4- or 5-STAR Type II helmets in these ratings and build your plan from there. Thank you for listening to Talk the TAUC.
