September/October 2010
A glove that fits both the hand and the task is an essential component of hand and finger protection, but equipment safety mechanisms and a safety culture are just as important.
By Kim Fernandez
Scrapyard dangers that threaten hands and fingers can lurk in all kinds of places. For example, one moment a worker is pulling aluminum cans out of a garbage bag—a seemingly low-risk task—and the next moment he’s standing there with a hypodermic needle hanging from his hand. Joe Bateman, ISRI’s safety outreach manager, witnessed such an incident a few years ago. The worker stood there, terrified, he recalls. “We both knew there was the potential for some sort of blood-borne pathogen to have entered his body.”
That’s not an unusual scenario—needles in bottles and cans are a real threat, say those who work in yards that sort and process residential recyclables. Some are the result of illegal drug users who dispose of their contraband in recyclables, and some are the result of confusing information diabetics receive regarding disposal of their needles. And that’s just one hazard on a long list of potential hand injuries a scrapyard worker faces during a typical workday. Cuts and bruises top that list, with puncture and crush wounds close behind, say scrapyard safety officers. “It’s the nature of our industry,” Bateman says. “We’re taking big chunks of scrap iron and cutting them up into jagged, smaller pieces of iron” as well as working with machinery that leaves workers vulnerable.
Safely guarding hands and fingers—like guarding other body parts—takes a combination of risk assessment, operating equipment safely, and wearing the proper personal protective equipment for the task.
Finding the Risks
More than 400,000 industrial hand and finger injuries occur each year nationwide, incurring about $2.8 billion in medical expenses, says Bob Bedard, president and general manager of NASCO-OP (New Philadelphia, Ohio). Injuries can vary from minor cuts and abrasions to amputations. Some horrific accidents occur simply because someone makes a split-second decision that puts him or her at risk, says Nicole Croteau, program manager for RecycleGuard® (Portsmouth, N.H.). They attempt to clear an obstruction or jam in a piece of equipment without using proper safety precautions. They think it will only take them a second or two, and it ends up costing them much more than time, Croteau says.
When trying to eliminate hand and finger injuries, it helps to know what your risks are; otherwise you won’t know what type of protection works best. Bateman recommends first conducting a hazard assessment of the facility, such as by using ISRI’s free safety blueprint service. “We assess each scrapyard operation and list the potential hazards to all body parts,” he says. Regarding hand injuries, “we’d look first at what kinds of hazards [the yard has] where somebody could injure their hands,” such as equipment or processes that could crush, cut, or burn them, Bateman says. The types of material the yard processes also determine the hazards that are present.
Equipment Design and Operation
Once a yard has identified the hazards, safety managers should assess whether a change in equipment design or operation will reduce or eliminate each one. “Gloves, like every other type of personal protective equipment, [are] always the last resort in preventing injuries,” Bateman explains. For example, “There might be conveyors that aren’t guarded” as they should be, he says. “Before we’d put somebody in gloves, we’d fabricate guards for that conveyor.” All employees should know not to operate machinery without guards in place, says Jerry Sjogren, safety director for E.L. Harvey & Sons (Westborough, Mass.). “There have to be consequences if they do.”
The decision to remove a machine’s guard often relates to production, Croteau says. “Usually, we hear it was a hardship for the employee to do his job with it on for whatever reason.” Sometimes supervisors tell workers to remove the guard just to meet production goals, Croteau notes. “Sometimes you talk to the [owners] and find a bigger issue,” she says: They have no idea why a guard was removed. “They just say, ‘Well, [the workers] were stupid.’ That may be, but [the owner] also had some ignorance as to what the action meant or that [the workers] might get hurt. You have to dig deeper.” Supervisors and workers must know the risks associated with disabling or removing guards, Croteau notes.
Bypassing guards or lock-out/tag-out procedures is more common than one might think, she says. “It’s a 30-second decision, and somebody loses an arm.” Workers who do that don’t just create risks for themselves, she adds. “They also put everybody else in harm’s way.” Josh Vaughn, risk and safety manager for the IMS Group (San Diego), agrees. “A large percentage of these accidents happen because people [bypass] guards,” he says. Guards “need to be used the way they were designed.” Vaughn recalls seeing workers at previous companies where he’s worked who use high-speed pieces of machinery or pulley systems with belts that could sever fingers stick their hands inside the moving systems to clear debris.
It’s one problem if the guard is removed or never installed, but “sometimes the machines don’t come with guards,” Vaughn says. “That’s usually because it’s a one-off machine that’s unique to that job, and the guard has to be designed just as delicately as the rest of the machine.” Simply throwing a piece of metal over an opening isn’t always enough. Designing a guard without careful consideration oftentimes can be more dangerous than running the equipment without one, he notes. “I’ve seen guards that are more dangerous than the machines they’re on,” he says. “I’ve seen some that actually pin body parts inside the machine. It’s supposed to keep you out, not hold you in there for repeated injuries.”
The Importance of PPE
Once workers operate equipment with safety features in place, using gloves and other personal protective equipment can go a long way further to halt hand and finger injuries. With myriad gloves on the market, choosing the right one can be a daunting task. “People think a glove is a glove, and it isn’t,” Bedard says. “A common misconception is that there is one magical pair of gloves on the market that will prevent most—if not all—work-related hand injuries. It makes a big difference if you’re protecting from cuts or chemicals.” Employers must look at the particular application in the yard and determine the hazards they have—abrasion, cuts, punctures, heat, chemicals, and/or vibration—and then find the right glove for that application, Bedard says. “There’s not one glove that’s going to cover all six of these hazards. It’s going to be a series of trade-offs. A cotton glove really doesn’t do you much good when you’re handling a car battery and the acid inside,” he points out. “Gloves should be selected based upon the hand hazard expected from a job.” If yards find themselves making glove trade-offs based on a job’s hazards, they should provide other control measures to limit or narrow those hazards, he adds.
Leather is the most popular material in gloves general laborers use due to its low cost and protection against abrasion, heat, and sparks, Bedard notes. The quality of the glove is important, too. “It’s not a matter of, ‘Just give me a leather glove,’” he says. “Generally, the tighter the grain, the better the glove.” Cotton-based gloves are second in popularity and come in many different styles, with or without special coatings, he adds. Gloves also can have American National Standards Institute ratings based on a cut-protection performance test score from zero to five, with five being the highest or most cut-resistant. ANSI also tests for how well the material stands up to cuts and abrasions. The European CE code similarly rates abrasion, cut, tear, and puncture protection. “In the glove world, this means a lot, but not all gloves have a rating,” Bedard says. He believes it’s important to purchase gloves from a well-known manufacturer. “You can generally be guaranteed that the quality is consistent,” he says. Gloves also should fit properly. Loose-fitting ones could catch on moving machinery and other hazards.
Commonly used scrapyard gloves don’t necessarily protect against needle sticks, however. Most gloves give a high level of protection to the palm and partially up the sides of the finger, Vaughn says. “When you reach into a bin and pull things out, you close your palm and expose the back of your hand and the sides of your hand. That’s where I see people get stuck.” One concern is that many times workers don’t even know they were stuck, he adds. For that specific hazard, safety managers recommend gloves designed for needle-stick resistance. For example, HexArmor (Grand Rapids, Mich.) makes a glove with microchip-sized hexagonal shapes fused together that provides protection against needles, Bedard says. Being aware of the potential risk also helps minimize the risk to some degree, Vaughn adds. “A lot of times the guys see the needles, stop the line, and remove them [safely].”
Though gloves can go a long way to protect workers, they do have some limitations. Scrapyards must remember to replace or refurbish gloves according to manufacturer guidelines. Workers should not wear gloves that are damaged, such as ones that are torn or split or have come into contact with materials that impede their protective features. “Take leather gloves,” Bedard says. “Once you get a little grease on them and they get wet, it’s like holding on to a banana peel.” Oily gloves also transfer heat readily, Sjogren says. “You want nice, dry gloves that are in decent shape.” Several companies offer glove refurbishing and cleaning services that are safe and cost-effective, Bateman says. Typically, a service truck picks them up and the service dry-cleans, repairs, and returns them.
Creating Safety Buy-In
Of course, even if there were a magic glove that protects against all hazards, it would be useless if workers don’t wear it. That’s a problem for some yard owners whose workers complain that their gloves are cumbersome, hot, and uncomfortable. “There are plenty of guys who say, ‘I don’t need those. They’re for sissies,’ or ‘They’re hot,’” says ISRI’s Bateman. “I say, ‘I don’t care. You can get cut, and you’re going to wear them. If you find gloves or steel-toed boots too uncomfortable to wear, maybe this is not the right place for you to work.’” It’s just good common sense, Bedard says. “What’s more uncomfortable: wearing the safety equipment, or getting sliced up by a piece of metal?”
Croteau says forcing workers to wear personal protective equipment such as gloves could be a challenge, but it’s vital to preventing accidents and costly claims. “There are various issues that make it difficult,” she says. “There might be language barriers; there may be issues with the caliber of people available. You may have to work harder to convince them and force disciplinary action, if necessary,” she says. “To not address it means it will continue to wreak havoc in the company.” Managers and owners also must set a good example by wearing their PPE. “Some owners are highly involved and take these things to heart, and that’s not to say they can’t have accidents as well,” she says, but “you always hear of folks saying the owner is out in the yard without a hard hat or safety vest or goggles,” she says. Some owners “don’t embrace the culture.” They give their once-a-week toolbox talks, but they don’t follow the rules themselves, Croteau notes.
Creating a safety culture is important, Sjogren says. It doesn’t matter what type of protection you have if workers refuse to use it. “You have to get the culture into your workplace to get people to assess the job they’re doing and think about what they need for the proper equipment,” he says. “You have to think about the ramifications, and the outcome of doing the job, ahead of time, and what might go wrong.” It’s also vital to communicate continuously why protective procedures are needed and that they must be followed without fail, Sjogren says. If a yard doesn’t allow a certain behavior, chances are people won’t behave that way, he notes.
Kim Fernandez is a Bethesda, Md.-based writer.
Glove Guidance
A recent ReMA For Your Safety newsletter provides guidelines on which type of glove is best suited to a particular application:
--Double-palmed leather gloves for heavy ferrous sorting and picking;
--Rubber-coated gloves for wet weather or sorting oily scrap;
--Heat-resistant leather gloves (welders’ gloves) for torchcutting;
--Puncture-resistant gloves for puncture resistance; and
--Kevlar gloves or sleeves to prevent cuts when sorting materials with jagged or sharp edges.
For more information, visit the ReMA Safety Web site at www.isrisafety.org.
A glove that fits both the hand and the task is an essential component of hand and finger protection, but equipment safety mechanisms and a safety culture are just as important.