A Helping Hand—for Your Hands
We use our hands all day, every day, at work and at home. Yet it’s easy to take them for granted. Gloves—the most common piece of personal protective equipment (PPE)—do a lot to protect our hands, but hand injuries are still the second-leading type of workplace injury.
- Every year, 1 million workers are treated in an ER for hand injuries.
- 70% of workers who experience a hand injury were not wearing gloves.
- Another 30% of victims had gloves on, but they were damaged or inadequate for the work task.
The three most common types of hand injuries are lacerations (deep cuts), crush injuries, and fractures. You can help prevent these injuries and others by following a few safe-work practices:
- Use tools that keep your hands away from dangerous areas of your workspace.
- Never put your hand in a place where you cannot see it.
- Never work on an energized piece of equipment. Follow the lock-out/tag-out procedures to make sure the equipment won’t be turned on while you are working on it.
- Always wear the proper gloves for the task:
- Mechanic’s gloves for moving and lifting equipment.
- Cut-resistant gloves for tasks that require nimble fingers while keeping your risk of getting cut to a minimum.
- Brazing gloves to reduce your hands’ exposure to heat and protect them from flames.
- Chemical-resistant gloves that, combined with your mechanic’s gloves, give you enough time to remove your hands from liquid refrigerant.
Permanent damage to your fingers and/or hands can radically change the way you live your life. But just by remembering to always wear the right gloves and applying a few simple safety practices at work, you can prevent these injuries from ever happening.