July/August 2014
Alligator shears are common scrapyard tools—and stories of injuries or near-misses while operating them are just as common. With proper training, protective equipment, and maintenance, recyclers can increase their safe operation and reduce the likelihood of injury.
By Stephenie Overman
Alligator shears look like big pairs of scissors, and recyclers use them like scissors—for cutting scrap material to shorter lengths or cutting off less-valuable materials to get a higher price for the scrap. These aren’t complicated processes, but they can be dangerous.
Kickback is a main danger when cutting long goods. “You’re holding a piece that is 10 feet long and feeding it through the shear. It might be copper pipe, which is smooth, easy—like butter,” and most likely poses no problems, says Bob Bedard, president and general manager of NASCO-OP in New Philadelphia, Ohio. “But generally as the metal’s hardness and thickness increases, the tendency to kick back increases, too. When the blade completes its cut and finally fractures the metal, the release of that pressure can make the cut pieces violently kick back toward the shear operator. Some metals, such as titanium, fracture with such force that flying pieces become a hazard. Or take 6061, an aluminum alloy that can bite back if you’re not paying attention.” The force of the kickback “can throw people on the ground or deliver a surprise undercut to your chin if you are not careful,” Bedard says.
Cleaning metal can bring fingers precariously close to sharp blades. The hazard exists at the point where the worker inserts, holds, or withdraws the stock by hand. “The closer you get your hands to the nip point when cleaning metal, the more dangerous it is. A lot of times people are holding small items up against the knife blades, fractions of an inch away” from an injury, Bedard says.
In fact, the most common injury related to alligator shears is finger amputation, says Joe Bateman, ReMA safety outreach manager. Although the prevalence of such injuries in the scrap industry is not known, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Washington, D.C.) reports that 5,100 U.S. workers in private industry suffered an amputation injury in 2012. Additional dangers can come from material that falls from the shear or flies out of the shear after being cut. Both can injure the operator or someone else standing nearby.
Even the most modern alligator shears “are not 100-percent safe and can’t be, if they are not used the way they’re supposed to be used,” says Alan Zelunka, president of Gensco Equipment (Toronto), which distributes scrap recycling equipment. “Nothing is 100-percent safe. Is a car 100-percent safe?” But recycling professionals say certain strategies can improve workers’ safety and reduce the chance of injury from these tools. In the end, Bedard says, alligator shear safety is “a marriage between properly trained people and a machine in proper working order.”
Equipment-Based Solutions
Alligator shears have been in scrapyards for more than a century. Early mechanical versions were driven by large flywheels, Bedard says. In an emergency, “there was no way to quickly disengage the flywheel. The jaw would keep opening and closing while the wheel slowed down.” The development of hydraulically driven alligator shears was a big step forward for safety, he says, because the jaw can be opened, closed, or stopped almost instantaneously and the operator can quickly disengage the hydraulic driving force from the jaws. Some yards still use the old-fashioned mechanical shears, but it’s possible to convert those to hydraulic shears, he adds.
Over the years, manufacturers have added features to make these machines safer. To reduce the risk of kickback injuries, a device called a hold-down “takes the brunt of the kickback instead of the worker,” Bedard says, but it requires discipline to operate properly. “The task of the operator is to adjust the hold-down for the items being processed,” adjusting for various sizes and types of pipes or beams being run through the shear. The operator needs to organize the materials prior to shearing, Bedard adds, to keep the process moving efficiently.
To prevent fingers and hands from getting caught in the shear blades, alligator shears come with safety guards—adjustable, cage-like devices that cover the blade openings. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Washington, D.C.) outlines requirements for machine guards, including for alligator shears, in Occupational Safety and Health Standards 29 CFR 1910.212, General Requirements for All Machines. OSHA’s “Safeguarding Equipment and Protecting Workers From Amputations” publication addresses this hazard as well, calling for guards that “provide physical barriers that prevent access to danger areas. Safeguarding devices either prevent or detect operator contact with the point of operation or stop potentially hazardous machine motion if any part of an individual’s body is within the hazardous portion of the machine. Both types of safeguards need to be properly designed, constructed, installed, used, and maintained in good operating condition to ensure employee protection.” In addition, the OSHA publication states, guards must avoid creating additional hazards; be secure, tamper-resistant, and durable; avoid interfering with normal operation of the machine; and allow for safe lubrication and maintenance.
Machine guards work in theory, but in practice it’s not that clear-cut. If guards are not working properly, if operators override or remove them, or if they are careless or inattentive, amputation can still occur. “The reality is that you have to have some kind of access to put the metal in, and that leaves an opening for some body part to also get in there,” Bedard says. “The industry has been trying to get manufacturers to eliminate the problem, but if there was a practical solution, it would have been solved by now. These shears have been in operation for over a hundred years.”
ISRI’s Bateman says scrapyard workers sometimes disable or remove the guard cages—which typically are painted a high-visibility yellow—because they interfere with their view of the contact point between the scrap and the blades. He offers this suggestion: Paint the guards flat black so that operators can more easily see through them.
Efforts have been made to get operators to use long-handled tongs when handling small items close to the shear blades, Bedard adds. “That’s the way it should be done. Unfortunately, we don’t see it too often in the field.”
Manufacturers continue to look for ways to make the equipment safer. “We just installed shears for [a company in] Camden, N.J., with a two-button safety switch. You have to use both hands to actually cut,” Zelunka says. United Milwaukee Scrap (Milwaukee) has eight alligator shears at its primary facility, and all use two-hand switch systems to prevent injuries. “You have to keep employees’ hands away” from the blade, says general manager Abe Hackett. With the two-hand system, “both hands have to activate the equipment. It doesn’t allow an employee’s hand to be in the actual jaws” of the blade. Also, Hackett says, workers can’t disable the safety features. It’s not advisable for two people to operate the machine—that would be even less safe, Zelunka says. Instead, one worker must feed or place the material in the shearing area with both hands, and then the blade can only be activated if both the worker’s hands are on the switches, Hackett says. The scrap does fall to the ground, so workers must also be mindful of clearing any slip, trip, or fall hazards created by the shearing process.
A key tool that many overlook is the owner’s manual that comes with the shear, Bedard says. “This essential document explains operation and maintenance requirements,” he says. “As with any shear, keeping the blades sharp and properly gapped is important or you’ll run into problems with jamming, and fixing a jam can easily lead to injury if the machine is not properly locked and tagged out.”
The shears also come with warning stickers and placards that explain various hazards, but “the nature of our work often impairs warning labels” due to the dust, dirt, and other elements in a yard, Bedard says. It’s up to supervisors and managers to get new safety stickers when needed, he adds. Daniel Fay, environmental, health, and safety director for Oscar Winski Co. (Lafayette, Ind.), agrees that clear instructional signage is important. Alligator shears “all work differently,” he points out. “Some are one-pedal; some are a two-pedal design, so you have to make sure the controls are marked … and everybody needs to know how to use them. [But] instructions wear out, and nobody notices.” His company has found a more durable solution, Fay says. “We weld, or cut like a stencil, an ‘F’ for forward and an ‘R’ for reverse on the pedal, so it never wears out,” and employees can clearly see directions.
Worker-Based Safety
Whatever mechanical advances are made, Zelunka believes recyclers will always need to rely on personal protective equipment and properly trained operators to minimize the hazards. “I’ve seen good operators who have never nicked a finger, even though their hands are near the blades,” he says. “In general, it’s a dangerous piece of equipment that has to be run properly.”
Oscar Winski Co. requires employees who are operating an alligator shear to wear cut-resistant gloves, safety glasses, face shields, leather aprons, and hard hats—and the area around the equipment is marked off to protect others, Fay says. Employees who are not trained to work with alligator shears are not allowed in that area. “This can be a dangerous machine,” Bedard says. “Put it in a safe area, practice good housekeeping by keeping it clear, and mark that area with lines and signs to indicate people should keep their distance. Treat it as a machine that needs to be protected and respected.”
To be effective, safety training for alligator shears should include both written instruction and hands-on experience, recyclers say. Every scrapyard needs to have written procedures for operating the shears, Bedard says. “If it were my yard, I would have employees read the operator’s manual, discuss safe operation, and then show them on the machine” how to operate it. A company can’t just have classroom-style instruction “and not give hands-on, practical experience,” he says. “You wouldn’t just hand the car keys to your 16-year-old daughter and send her on her way. You’d make sure she had driver’s training. You need to do that with alligator shears—train people.”
At Oscar Winski Co., “we talk about [how alligator shears operate] a little bit in a classroom setting—it gives [workers] an idea what an alligator shear is, if they’re new,” Fay says. But the emphasis is on one-on-one practice with a supervisor or experienced employee operating the one-pedal and two-pedal alligator shears. “We work with a person [for] at least a week. Anybody who runs [an alligator shear] has gone through specific training about the dangers and how you need to operate it. … We hit that area a lot,” he says.
Fay also has a test to make sure the operators remember what they’ve learned. Periodically, “we go up to employees who are running the equipment. We put a pencil in [between the shear blades] and say, ‘Get that pencil. Get the pencil out without breaking it.’ We make them demonstrate they know how to react when a situation occurs. If they need to get somebody’s hand out of [the blades], they need to know how. We make sure people are versed in [how to handle] emergencies.”
There are so many safety features on the alligator shears at United Milwaukee Scrap that “if you don’t train new employees, they usually can’t even get the units to operate,” Hackett points out. Training puts new workers on the right path, but Hackett says he has found, in general, “it’s not usually new employees who get hurt. Usually it’s somebody who has become very comfortable with the equipment.” That’s why the company insists on shears with two-hand switch systems and continually reinforces its safety message. Hackett has worked for United Milwaukee Scrap for just over a year, but he has 17 years of scrap processing experience. “I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly,” he says, over the course of his career. “Injuries are few and far between here compared to places I’ve seen that operate with only half the number of [alligator shear] units.”
Rocky Mountain Recycling in Commerce City, Colo., takes the same approach with alligator shears as it does with any other potentially dangerous piece of equipment, says Brian Henesey, vice president and general manager. “You look at, What are the risks? What is the lock-out/tag-out program for that piece of equipment? … How do you incorporate that into your training program?” Because the company has several employees for whom Spanish is their first language, the company conducts some of the training and provides written materials in Spanish as well as English, he adds.
No matter what language workers speak, “consider the work force and figure out the best way to get the information out there,” Bedard says. Document the training you’ve provided and have employees sign off on it, he adds. And follow training with enforcement: Employees who don’t follow the proper procedures should be disciplined, Bedard adds. “Managers have got to stand up and say, ‘No, I know you’re trying to do it quicker, but it’s not worth the risk.’”
Even before training, Henesey says, “we’re very deliberate in hiring the right people. We want people who are forward-thinking.” And beyond specific training, “I tell every employee who works here, ‘Do not put yourself in a position [in which] you feel unsafe, if you’re unsure.’” It’s part of creating the right culture, which is critical to a safe work environment, he says. “We all live it together and take care of each other. I personally believe there are no freak accidents. I believe owners are responsible [for looking] into potential hazards and attempting to create a workplace environment where people want to come to work.”
Stephenie Overman is a writer based in Reston, Va.
Alligator shears are common scrapyard tools—and stories of injuries or near-misses while operating them are just as common. With proper training, protective equipment, and maintenance, recyclers can increase their safe operation and reduce the likelihood of injury.