The National Sanitation Foundation (NSF), together with American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and National Standard of Canada (CAN) established a slip resistance standard for recreational water facilities. Formalized in NSF/ANSI/CAN 50 – 2019, the standard requires a wet Slip Resistance Value, SRV, of 40 or greater, measured using the pendulum slip resistance test method. Though […]
Flooring for Dementia-Friendly Environments
Several million Americans are suffering from dementia for which there is as yet no known prevention or cure. For people living with dementia, a slip, trip or fall can seriously impede their physical health as well as their confidence and mobility. Flooring has an important role in creating a safe environment. The Dementia Services Development […]
SDA Can Offer Foreign Insurance if Needed
As pointed out elsewhere in these pages, Safety Direct America has general liability and professional liability (Errors and Omissions) to cover our floor slip resistance testing work for clients located in the USA. However, we often do laboratory or field floor slip test work for foreign clients, sometimes on their own premises, e.g. in Canada […]
Detailed Information on Our Abrasive Anti-Slip Tapes
Occasionally a customer asks what the “grit size” is for our self-adhesive Safety Grip abrasive anti-slip tapes. The numbers are mostly irrelevant for reasons discussed below, but here they are together with their wet Pendulum Test Values (PTV): Standard Safety Grip is roughly equivalent to 60 grit abrasive paper: wet PTV = 71 (using TRL […]
Anti-slip Handrail Grip Tapes are Non-abrasive and great for Indoors or Outdoors
Slips on stairs can be very serious and sometimes fatal. Our self-adhesive anti-slip tapes on stair treads or SparkleTuff™ transparent anti-slip floor coating on stairs can make them slip resistant and can protect against foot slips, but self-adhesive, non-abrasive grip tape on the handrail can provide valuable “insurance” against slips in high-risk areas at a very […]
SparkleTuff™ Transparent Anti-Slip Floor Coating Has Outstanding Chemical Resistance, Zero VOCs
We are sometimes asked if SparkleTuff™, our long-lasting transparent anti-slip floor coating with excellent wet slip resistance, has good resistance to chemicals and cleaning/sanitizing agents. It does! It even stands up well to concentrated sulfuric and hydrochloric acids, ethanol, and sodium and ammonium hydroxides! SparkleTuff™ Anti-Slip Floor Coating is a polysiloxane, a type of coating […]
Suggested Specifications for Lifetime Slip Resistance of Flooring
When we’re buying new automobile tires we’d like to know not only that the tires are good at the time of purchase, but that they will have a reasonably long lifetime for us. Michelin, for instance, offers models with mileage warranties (within a time limit) from 36,000 to 80,000 miles. When buying slip-resistant flooring, customers […]
How to Get Reliable and Useful Floor Slip Resistance Test Results
Slip and fall injuries can carry total liabilities that are often in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or even more. Investment in flooring is long-term and often involves appreciable capital, whether you are an individual homeowner or have a string of large office buildings and shopping centers. Though the charges for floor slip resistance […]
Safety Direct America is Still Running at (almost) Full Speed
At this writing the death toll of Americans from COVID-19 is over 34,000. With the world upside down, the last thing you need is to have a slip-and-fall accident. Falls cause 28,000 premature deaths in the USA every year. Most of these deaths (some of which occur prematurely but months after the fall) are due […]
CoatingsPro article: How to Specify a Slip-Resistant Floor Coating
An article in the March 2020 edition of CoatingsPro™ Magazine details how to specify an anti-slip floor coating, specifically a transparent one. (A printable version of the article is also available.) After establishing a reliable method to determine wet slip resistance, the article discusses initial slip resistance safety criteria; durability testing of the coating’s slip […]