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Hand Safety and Injury Prevention  

Workplace Safety

Hand injuries happen in the blink of an eye, but their effects can last a lifetime. Some workers lose their hands; others develop an infection or require surgery. That’s reason enough to make hand safety a priority in every workplace.

Keeping your employees safe requires planning and training. Companies with a good safety reputation not only provide the right tools for the job, but also have appropriate guards for sharp objects, moving parts, and automated machinery. 

Where Hand Safety Matters Most

More than 100,000 private sector workers suffered hand injuries in 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Forty-three percent of these hand injuries occurred in three high-risk workplaces:

One-third of hand injuries occurred in manufacturing.

3,000 workers in the natural resources and mining industries suffered hand injuries.

2,700 hand injuries occurred in agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting.

Prevention is especially important when workers use hazardous tools and machinery with pinch points, rotating parts, hot and cold spots, or automation systems. 

The pinch points

are places between two objects where a part of the body can be captured, for example B. machines with two parts which move at high speed.

A rotating piece of equipment

A rotary device such as a clutch, a pin or a fan is an extreme danger for workers who wear rings or gloves in a vague manner. The equipment can break clothes or rings and remove the hand from a worker. Hot points in machines can cause serious burns in the hands. 

Hot spots

Workers meet hot spots in devices such as injection forms, welding instruments, burners, cutting equipment and welding tools. 

Cold spots

Cold spots pose a hazard to workers handling transfer tubing in cooling systems. Extreme cold is just as dangerous as heat and can also cause serious burns.

Automation

Automation is particularly dangerous. If a machine is programmed to start by itself, even when it is not running, it can start unexpectedly and easily trap hands if a worker is too close and not paying attention.

The most common types of hand injuries include contusions, bruises, cuts, abrasions, strains, amputations, dislocations, carpal tunnel syndrome, and Raynaud's disease. Recovering from an injury like a deep cut could impact a worker’s daily life for months.

Wearing a Ring Changed Robert’s Life

One of the simplest tips for preventing hand injuries is to ask everyone to remove their ring when they are on a construction site. Take the following true story. Robert Whitfield, an Air Force Weapons Distribution Support employee, was about to leave work for lunch when a co-worker stopped him and asked if he could check a connection in an airplane hold. Robert had put his wedding ring back on as he was getting ready for lunch, but he didn’t think to take it off when his co-worker asked for help. As he jumped down from the bay after checking the connection, Robert’s ring caught on an object, severely damaging the bone and tissue and resulting in a partial amputation. Because of Robert’s accident, new policies and training were enacted within his workplace.

However, complications from his injury drastically altered Robert’s quality of life. He had a painful recovery period and financial issues that almost caused him to lose his home. Now, 30 years later, Robert works as a corporate safety specialist, sharing his story and teaching workers how to keep their healthy hands.

Train Your Team to Avoid Potential Hazards

As Robert’s story illustrates, workers play an important role in preventing serious hand injuries. The first step in safety training is ensuring that employees know the hazards associated with their work and how to avoid them. As a safety or training manager, your next step is to implement systems to prevent these leading causes of serious injuries:

Human error due to distraction and complacency

is common among workers using hand and power tools such as nail guns. Mistakes can occur in countless ways, from forgetting to remove a piece of jewelry to accidentally getting close to moving machinery. One of the most common forms of human error is forgetting, or simply choosing not to wear protective gloves on the job. 

Deactivation of safety features

Deactivation of safety features or bypassing, causes unnecessary hand and finger levels. Employees can find the functions cumbersome or think they are slowing them down. Stress for employees with whom they should never mess or change checks that give them hand protection, regardless of how uncomfortable they seem.

Taking off gloves

Saying gloves to perform a work task often results in hand lesions. For example, an employee can get freezing by turning off his gloves in an extremely cold environment. Typically, this happens when the worker wants to complete tasks that will be more difficult with gloves on. He decides to take his gloves off for a minute or so. In extreme weather, though, a short time can be too long.

Not following instructions

leads to injuries. Sometimes, workers intentionally don’t follow safety protocols because they are bored with a routine task. Others think their job experience means they can bypass instructions.

Distraction in the form of a wandering mind or looking away from a machine can lead to injury.

Frustration can cause carelessness and injury

Bending the rules just once can cause serious injury to hands and fingers.

Communicate about the risks to workers regularly and pay close attention to morale on your job site to keep everyone positive and focused on their work. 

Three components of an effective security program

Best practices for a professional security program include three options for preventing hand injuries in the workplace: technical controls, administrative controls and PSA.

Engineering Controls

The technical controls reduce the dangers by using devices with integrated security systems. The common types of technical controls include security officers, devices for electrical proximity, emergency stop devices and ergonomic instruments.

The machine guards include security mechanisms to protect the hands against sharp objects, rotating parts and clamping points.

The electronic, proximity -limiting devices prevent the hands of a worker from getting too close to the equipment. The devices include switches, sensors and electronic rays. With emergency disorders, workers can stop a machine by pressing a button, pulling a rope or fasting a switch to avoid an injury. In some cases, the blades are immediately pending if they contact the soft tissues.

Providing the right tool is a great way to prevent injuries. Ergonomic technical controls include the use of tools and machines that hang less wrists, hands and fingers. 

Administrative Controls

Administrative controls are procedures implemented by management that are useful when engineering controls cannot be implemented or alone cannot effectively reduce the risk of a particular hazard. Administrative controls include.

• safety training
• physical security measures such as lockout-tagout devices;
• warning signs
• product substitutions; and
• compliance with ergonomic principles.

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

When engineering and administrative controls are not feasible or sufficient, companies must provide PPE—usually work gloves—to protect workers who may injure their hands.

The Right Gloves for the Job

When it comes to hand injury prevention techniques, the answer is simple: wear the right work gloves. The right gloves keep germs and dangerous chemicals away from the skin, prevent chips and splinters, resist punctures and cuts from sharp objects or materials, and protect against heat and cold. Because loose gloves can get caught in machinery, it is essential that workers wear gloves that fit properly. For safety reasons, workers should check their gloves for damage and wear them every time they go to work.

Proper safety measures include assessing the safety equipment needed for the risks of each job on your site. Types of gloves and their uses include:

Heat-resistant gloves protect workers from skin burns and heat-related injuries.

Gloves made of wire mesh, Kevlar, and tough synthetic yarn protect against cuts and punctures and are often used by people who work with knives. Non -conductive gloves, often indicated as rubber gloves, are worn by electricians and engineers to protect low voltage electricity.

Gloves non -thin, often indicated as surgical gloves, protect their hands from the substances transmitted by the blood, as well as by some chemical and corrosive substances.

The neoprene, nitrile, latex and vinyl gloves resist oil products and provide chemical protection for those who work with oils, acids, caustic and solvents.

Leather gloves resist sparks, chips, rough objects and heat.

Cotton fabric gloves protect from dirt, flakes, scrolls and abrasion. Waterproof gloves withstand wet environments and are often insulated with foam to protect against cold temperatures as well.

Although over 100,000 workers sustain hand injuries each year, many of these are preventable through worker behavior changes and the correct use of PPE. We can all make a significant contribution to hand safety in our workplaces, even by simply sharing this contribution with colleagues and managers.

Would you like to speak to an HSI consultant about improving workplace safety in your company? Contact us today.