Amputations occur most often when employees operate unguarded or inadequately safe guarded machines. Here is a recent incident.
A worker lost his hand in an industrial accident at a foundry in the state of New York, United States. The worker was operating a machine during the week of November 4, 2012. The machine severed his hand. The worker was taken to a local hospital for treatment. The injury did not appear to be life threatening, officials and coworkers said.
"Yeah, he's okay" said the president of the company where the injured worked. The president declined to elaborate on the circumstances.
No other information was made available in this incident. In 2012, there have been several incidents where workers have lost appendages (e.g., hands, fingers, etc.) in aluminium plants globally. Governmental health and safety organizations have implemented programs that inform, and educate, and enforce employers of the dangers of work place amputations.
Occupational Health & Safety Administration (OSHA) has the following Quick Card about workplace amputations here. As well as this great document titled Safeguarding Equipment and Protecting Employees from Amputations, which can be downloaded here.
Please comment.
10 comments:
The APSB just recalled a East Coast US city that had a food processing plant that had a series of amputations two decades ago. The food processing plant had a procedure on how to deal with amputations! They had a cooler with ice ready, the amputated hand would be placed in it. The injured worker and cooler would be sent to the local hospital and most times the hand would be reattached. The hospital surgeons became very good at reattaching the hands. Ironically, it became so common place in this city that the news media would not report it.
I am very sorry about this ,there shall be some safty monitor for this
SO SORRY FOR THE INCIDENTS. 50% of the accidents occur due to personnal negligence. However much trainings are given they are over looked.
I too am very sorry for this and any other industrial deaths or accidents.
Training, guarding, personal protective equipment are secondary in the hierarchy of safety behind avoiding the hazard whatsoever.
I see many aluminium foundries across Europe that expose workers to open band saws, as an example, when there are many variants of machine that will undertake the task of cutting gates and feeders in an enclosed 'box'. This is avoidance of risk and looking deeper the increase in productivity and consistency may be commercially good.
As a Manager I would not view loss of fingers, hands as the fault of the workers but as my failure that a Safe System of Work has not been implemented using easy to find machines or methods.
Its totally unfortunate. i feel sorry for the incident. we have to modify yourself that any body can do an industrial work, particularly foundry. we must have a training program for each skill and the safety equipment. Monitor them on daily basis to improve the skill and reduce the physical work. We are responsible for their negligence and accidents.
Thank you for the comments, please keep the coming. This incident as so many others can be prevented. It is the hope of the APSB that by publicizing this incident, someone, somewhere may remember this incident and change how they or a coworker performs a task.
We all lose any time a worker is hurt--the worker, the family, the company, the customer. For many years, the Aluminum Association has conducted casthouse safety workshops. These meetings include presentations by member companies and suppliers designed to prevent lost time accidents and promote state of the art personal protective equipment and practices. The Associaiton also maintains lost time data designed to learn why a given accident occured and what can be done to prevent future accidents.
Our possible program would be....think before you act and dont do anything stupid like lose a hand....But on the serious side there was a story that occured very close to home...we knew the guy from a previous project..he was a skimmer for a huge melting furnace and he was sweeping up around the top opening by himself just before finishing time and fell into the pot. They found the broom and half his hand still sitting next to the opening hatch. Very sad for all and our general manager attended the funeral. Be carefull everyone.
Thank you for the comments. Sometimes safety is personal, not in terms of "protecting myself". But in terms of "I remember what happened to...".
Used this article as a weekly Safety Talk. Thank you for posting it.
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