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How Your Slip Coefficient Rating Can Guarantee Safety

How Your Slip Coefficient Rating Can Guarantee Safety A safe walking surface should not be too hard to achieve. Whether it’s wet or dry, the floors in your property should create an accident-free environment. Unfortunately, that is not always the case with many places. According to a slip-fall statistics, slip and fall accidents account for […]

“All Floors are Slippery When Wet — Right?”

Not right. The right flooring for the situation can be safely slip-resistant when wet or even when lubricated with oil or grease, as in a commercial kitchen or a parking structure. Most people will accept that a concrete sidewalk or a black-top road is slip-resistant wet for pedestrians. We can safety walk or even jog […]

Slip-Resistant Testing

Slip-Resistant Testing Ever worried about your business being liable for someone slipping on your floor, or slipping on the concrete by your pool? Slipping can be dangerous and can severely injure someone. Falls are the leading cause of nonfatal injuries with an average of 13,000,000 accounting for 35% of injuries in the last recorded year. […]

Falls Deaths in the USA: a 9/11 Every Six Weeks

The National Safety Council’s (NSC) latest published statistics show that falls are causing 28,000 deaths in the USA annually (see p. 19 of their report). This is the equivalent of a 9/11/2001 attack every six weeks, all year long. Moreover, falls deaths are approaching motor-vehicle deaths. Safety Direct America offers products and services that can […]

Natural Stone with Sustainable Slip Resistance Wet

Flooring that gets high foot traffic and can get wet or greasy in use needs slip resistance (or skid resistance) that stands up well under wear rather than losing its wet slip resistance after a few weeks. McDonalds Restaurants spent years in research and devised a laboratory slip test that assesses how well the wet […]

Stop Slips on Cruise Ships!

Since 2008, Safety Direct America has been helping some of the world’s foremost cruise ship companies to prevent slips and falls by helping their designers choose flooring appropriate to the situation (with the correct level of wet coefficient of friction). The work improves safety both on new cruise ships and on ships that are routinely […]

OSHA’s “Suggestion” for Minimum Floor Coefficient of Friction (COF)

We often hear the question, “What does OSHA require for floor slip resistance?” The answer is that OSHA doesn’t require anything, but nevertheless has caused a lot of confusion for employers and the public on this subject. There has never been an official OSHA slip test or safety standard for flooring. In a nonmandatory appendix […]

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How to Prevent Slips and Falls on a Swimming Pool Deck

Unfortunately, many swimming pool decks are slippery when wet as installed! This can and too often does lead to severe accidents for both children and adults. The deck that was supposed to supply fun for the family, club members, or the public becomes a liability that causes pain, suffering, expensive medical treatment, and income losses. […]

What’s the Difference Between the Three ANSI standards for floor slip resistance?

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has three pedestrian floor friction standards involving tests using the BOT-3000E digital tribometer, intended for testing flooring for indoor use. Why do they have three standards, and what’s the difference between them? They all have different test methods and different minimum coefficient of friction values (0.42, 0.43, and 0.60). […]

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When Should You Test Flooring for Slip Resistance?

Many building owners find themselves in trouble after a refurbishment or new build, because the flooring is unexpectedly slippery when wet. An entrance lobby, restroom, pool deck, spa, or factory floor are common locations where this problem occurs. When should flooring be tested for slip resistance? Some architects might say, “Never.” Many lawyers might say, […]