A local dentist and his wife took their kids to Disneyland. They returned home, heartbroken, without their two children. The elder child had disappeared from a crowded area of the theme park. The parents, frantic in their search, left the younger child in care of a stranger. The stranger and this child also disappeared.

Welcome to the Urban Legend

When I was the editor of a daily newspaper, I heard this tale from caller after caller. After a while, I realized that no one knew the name of the family and no one had actually spoken to them. That's when I recognized the story for what it was — an urban legend.

At the time, I had been reading work of Jan Harold Brunvand, who wrote a series of entertaining books about urban legends. Today, recording, investigating and debunking these urban legends has become a popular activity on the Internet.

Two Kinds of Urban Legend

An urban legend is a story that circulates as folklore in today's society. When researchers try to verify the story, they usually find no basis in fact to support it.

Many urban legends are about supposed safety hazards. In some cases, the legend provides wrong or misleading information. Tuesday's note in SafetyXChange about the hazard posed by welding flash on contact lenses is a perfect example. No such hazard exists. Another popular form of urban legend, like the Disneyland example above, describes a particular incident that never actually occurred.

Urban Legends and the Safety Profession

Thanks in large part to the Internet, it's easier to identify items as the urban legends that they are. But as illustrated by what happened in Tuesday's SafetyXChange newsletter, some legends still manage to get past the scrutiny and find their way into mainstream and otherwise respectable information sources.

During my career as a safety editor, I've seen that story about contact lenses printed by some pretty credible sources. A spokesperson for a national eye health organization also related it earnestly to me a few years ago. I'm not going to go into all the reasons this story couldn't be true; SafetyXChange readers have already covered that.

The Bricklayer

The contact lens myth is just one of many legends circulating in the safety field. The classic bricklayer story has appeared — as fact — in at least one safety publication:

When a bricklayer finished a three-storey chimney, bricks remained on the roof. Having sent his assistant home, he decided to use a rope pulley to get the leftover bricks down by himself. He winched a metal bucket up to the roof, where he loaded it. He then climbed to the ground where he wrapped part of the rope around his hand and untied the end connected to a railing. Suddenly the weight of a falling bucket of bricks shot him upwards. In passing, the bucket broke his nose and shoulder. At the pulley he broke a few fingers. Meanwhile the bucket smashed and lost its load on the ground, then shot upwards as the bricklayer fell. This time it hit him in the groin. He broke both feet on the pile of bricks and let go of the rope. The bucket fell again and fractured his skull.

How to Spot an Urban Legend

So how can you spot an urban legend? Here are some signs that should set off bells and whistles:

• The story seems too good to be true.
• It has a twist at the end, possibly humorous or possibly horrible.
• The story makes a point — sometimes a moral one, other times about the things people most fear.
• You can't trace the origin of the story. The source is about a nice couple in the next town, a brother-in-law's cousin or some guy on the third shift at the other mill.

To identify the story (or hazard) as an urban legend:

• Do a Google search with keywords from the story plus the terms myth or legend
• Look in urbanlegends.about.com
• Visit: http://www.snopes.com

[Editor's Note: In the case of the contact lens misinformation, one reader wrote: “It took less than two minutes to check with the CCOHS website to find the correct answer to the question: “Can you wear contact lenses when welding?”]

Conclusion

Safety legends are entertaining and mostly harmless, but they can cause you to get worried about the wrong hazards instead of concentrating on the real dangers.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

Have you been taken by an urban legend? Send your stories to catherinej@bongarde.com and let me know if we can use your name/company name.

TRAINING BLOOPERS

True stories of experiences trainers wish they could forget

Our training room was being painted so we had new employee orientation, including safety topics, in a room used by our computer staff. We did not know that there was a bad dip in the hallway floor leading to the area. One of our new employees tripped at the dip and broke his leg. Thus, he had a workers' comp claim before he even got to his assigned office.

Name withheld by request

What's the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you during a training session? Send your stories to catherinej@bongarde.com. If we use it, we won't print your name, unless you specifically say we can.

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