So how often does this happen?

The exponential growth of social media over the past 5 years is amazing. The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog reads various postings and noticed this older tweet. We do want to acknowledge that there were lots more recent, but this apparently was the only one we notice that did not include vulgarity.

The poster stated that molten metal spill down his leg and he got "second degree burns". The APSB hopes that the injury that this worker suffered healed fully. Second degree burns are serious injuries. We hope that this worker reported the incident to his/her supervisor.

The importance of reporting injuries can not be understated. We have posted incidents where workers have failed to report molten metal burn injuries. Overtime these burn injuries can become infected. Why would a worker not report an injury? There could be a myriad of reasons including being afraid, scared, or even machismo. Regardless of the reason all injuries no matter the size should be reported. 

A number of years ago one of the editors of the APSB heard about an aluminium plant in the USA that was operating on 6 years of no recordable incidents. Which we found to be both amazing and inspirational that we decided an article needed to be written about that plant. The question the APSB always asks plants who are in the midst of a record duration of no recordables is what is more important safety or the streak? Two weeks prior to arriving at that aluminium plant a maintenance worker trip down some stairs. The plant manager heard about it and ask for the maintenance worker to report to him. The worker repeatedly stated that he was fine and that it was not a recordable. The plant manager questioned if indeed the worker was fine and sent him away. While the maintenance worker walked down a hall he noticed that he was limping. The plant manager explained to the worker that safety was more important than the streak of consecutive days without an recordable  incident. 

The maintenance worker was worried, as was every worker in that plant of being the one who "broke the streak". We congratulated the plant manager for caring more about safety than the streak. 

The determination of recordable incidents should never be made by the worker(s) involved but by the procedures listed in your company's safety management plan.