Incident alert
LOCATION:
CONCRETE PRODUCTS PLANT
ACTIVITY:
GUARDING AND ISOLATION
SUB ACTIVITY:
NO SUB ACTIVITY AVAILABLE
DATE ISSUED:
21/10/2019 12:24:18
TITLE
FATAL 6 – Serious injuries to fingers in 4 separate incidents
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
ACCIDENT / INCIDENT DETAILS
A company experienced four serious injuries to fingers in a two-month period:
• Amputation of fingertips due to isolation not being robust for equipment being worked on.
• Finger damaged in a flywheel when trying to manually move drive belts on a blocked machine
• Deep lacerations to fingers when reaching behind a circular saw to retrieve wood.
• Fingers badly damaged when they were trapped between a falling floor beam and fixed metal girder.
All of the incidents above had a combination of different circumstances and factors leading to the injuries. It is difficult to pinpoint any single action that will prevent further harm. However, operatives should all take a minute before commencing tasks and think about the potential for finger injuries.
ACCIDENT / INCIDENT IMAGES
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LEARNING POINTS / ACTIONS TAKEN
Detailed below are a number of steps that if correctly followed might have prevented these accidents and will prevent further similar injuries. The precautions are:
• Always check your isolations have been effective before placing hands in machinery/ equipment
• Do not move belts/pulleys/flywheels and similar without specific tools/defined methods
• Check that you have the correct gloves (personal protective equipment) for the task
• Use push sticks/tag lines and similar as opposed to placing your hands/fingers at risk.
• Check if the risk assessment requires any specific controls to protect your hands?
Think where you put your hands and fingers – don’t place them at risk!
LEARNING POINTS / ACTIONS IMAGES
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