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RACHEL MARTIN: More than 30 million workers in the U.S. wear safety
helmets to prevent head injuries. Yet most of these hard hats offer little
protection against serious impacts. Here’s NPR’s Jon Hamilton.
BOTTLANG: Think of a boxer, get knocked in the chin, makes the head spin,
and you drop like a fly. The human brain is readily injured by a rotational
force.
HAMILTON: The brain is a bit like an egg yolk, a soft capsule surrounded by
liquid inside a hard shell. You can shake an egg forcefully without disrupting
the contents. But if you spin one hard enough, the yolk inside will rupture. Dr.
Steve Madey, an orthopedic surgeon in Portland, says most hard hats and
helmets act like an eggshell.
STEVE MADEY: They do a job at reducing force, so they serve a purpose.
But if they're not optimized to decrease the spin, they're not optimized to
prevent injury.
MADEY: It'll hit the ground, it'll have friction, and it'll create spin.
MADEY: If you throw a ball into a sandpit, the sand gives underneath, right?
It doesn't impart spin to the ball.
HAMILTON: So, the company developed a helmet liner made from a special
plastic honeycomb designed to act like sand.
HAMILTON: The liner can be found in several big-brand sports helmets. And
now WaveCel is offering its own line of hard hats. In both sports helmets and
hard hats, the company faces competition from the Swedish firm MIPS.
Studies show MIPS technology also reduces spin but not as well. A WaveCel
hard hat costs $189, several times the price of a standard helmet. And it's not
clear whether any sort of anti-spin technology will become standard on job
sites. Dr. Brandon Lucke-Wold, a neurosurgeon at the University of Florida,
says he has yet to see much change.
HAMILTON: Lucke-Wold says that's one reason he's still treating patients
who get a concussion despite wearing a hard hat. So, he'd like to see more
workers in helmets that help reduce the speed at which the head spins in an
impact.
LUCKE-WOLD: By having this slowing process from these helmets, it's
keeping the brain more stationary. And so that has a lot of potential benefit.
HAMILTON: Including keeping workers out of the hospital and on the job.