Experts say about two million U.S. workers are exposed to hand-arm vibration on the job and as many as half of them will develop Hand-Arm Vibration Syndrome (HAVS). Here’s a look at what causes HAVS, how to recognize symptoms and how to mitigate the damage.
Currently, there are no hand protection standards for measuring hand impact reduction. Manufacturers are not required to test the impact protection of their gloves, so how do you evaluate and compare impact protection offered by various glove models?
When using machinery, pinch points can catch workers when they are not looking. Pulleys and belts can form in-running nips, a type of pinch point that can draw the hand in and cause severe damage. Here’s what to do:
Wear work gloves when handling rough materials and when hands are directly involved with lifting or moving objects.
A breakdown of the five most common hand injuries in the workplace include lacerations (63%), crushes (13%), avulsions or detachments (8%), punctures (6%) and fractures (5%), according to the Safety and Health Council of North Carolina.
The articles in this eBook have one aim: to protect your workers from the wear, tear and long-term punishment their hands might have to endure: sprains, strains, tears, soreness, pain, cuts, lacerations, punctures, bruises, contusions, fractures and amputations.
If you have ever slipped at work due to worn-out shoes, you know how important good footwear can be. However, even the best shoes wear out, so it is important to replace them before they become a hazard in the workplace. But when, precisely, is that?
Slips, trips, and falls are a leading cause of work-related injuries.
Improper donning and doffing combined with reuse resulted in more viruses transferred to the hands during scenarios simulating the use of filtering facepiece respirator. The importance of covering a cough or a sneeze to prevent spreading germs to those around us, often using the crook of an elbow, is something that most of us learned before starting school. Healthcare providers typically wear personal protective equipment, such as the filtering facepiece respirator, to protect both themselves and their patients.
Overview: Fog limits the effectiveness of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for eye and face protection. According to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), it is one of the three most significant barriers to their use, ahead of lack of comfort and fit and scratching. If lenses are fogged, people won’t wear them. If workers can’t see, they could have accidents.
In the best-case scenario, normalization of deviance goes against recommended work practices, but when it comes to safety, this common human tendency can have devastating consequences.
In a May, 2016 letter of interpretation, OSHA’s Directorate of Enforcement Programs answered this question:
Question: If an employee with a neatly trimmed goatee is wearing a respirator and it does not interfere with the seal of the face piece or valve function, and has passed a fit test, does this meet the intent of the OSHA’s Respiratory Protection standard?