Opening Discussion

While I’d asked in an earlier blog on skylight safety whether you thought skylight manufacturers should be responsible for the safety of individuals walking on their product or if that should be the responsibility of the individual placing themselves in a dangerous situation—it seems like many manufacturers are asking if this should be the responsibility of glass skylight manufacturers at all. As one member of the American Architectural Manufacturers Association’s (AAMA) Skylight Council's skylight fall protection task group brought up in one of the recent conference calls on its scope, there's very little data at this point on how many people have fallen from skylights or what type of skylights were involved in the incident—or, for that matter, if they were skylights at all or merely some type of “roof opening” including unprotected holes on construction sites.

Since the article on ASTM committee E06.51’s work on a human impact resistance standard for skylights ran in the May 2008 USGlass, the Skylight Council task group has worked on revising its scope to reflect the fact that no concrete data exists on skylight-related accidents as of yet. It seems that the AAMA task group is doing a good job of backing up and asking that first question: what risk are we really looking at? The group is examining data to see if glass skylights are creating an unaddressed risk, and upon doing so aims to address what they can do to lower related accidents should the need be there.

As an editor dealing with technical topics I feel that much of my job is trying to collect background information to get to that first real question. Such has been the case during this last week as I’ve spoken with manufacturers of another product that has been under much discussion on our newsletter, fire-rated glazing. Over the last year we’ve published stories about several different groups that are examining the topic of labeling for this protective product. Jumping right into a topic that has been discussed since the labeling system was adopted in the 2003 International Building Code, I’ve done my best to understand the background on why this topic has raised so much discussion, and I’ve had plenty of questions for the professionals I’ve spoken with. But I feel that all of that information is needed to get to the real question behind a story, and that’s something I’m still working to find out on this topic of labeling. If you have any comments about this topic or why we’re addressing it, I’d certainly appreciate your input—shoot me an e-mail at mheadley@glass.com.

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