"EMS personnel arrived they could only confirm his death..."

The importance of machine guarding cannot be understated. Countless injuries and deaths could be prevented if proper guarding is utilized on older machinery. Why older machinery? Because in our experience new machinery has proper guarding already installed. The issue is with older machinery. Here is a recent fatality highlight the hazard of machine guarding.

A worker was caught in the rollers of a machine in the painting line section of a manufacturing company in Europe one day during the month of May 2019. His coworkers managed to free him but, because of the wounds, when the EMS personnel arrived they could only confirm his death.

The painting line section, in which he worked, was shutdown due to the investigation that was carried out by both the competent authorities and the company itself, according to sources confirmed by the company.

The federal authorities, the local Police, the local firefighters, a medical helicopter, a medical team from a nearby town and an ambulance with basic life support all responded to the incident.

We offer our sincere condolences to the worker’s family, friends, and coworkers. We hope the company will provide mental health counseling to deceased worker’s coworkers who were there on that fateful day. We recommend to companies to offer mental health counseling to workers for years after an incident.

The Aluminium Times magazine published two articles on this topic.  It can be downloaded here.

Lastly, the vintage photo that we posted with this incident was done not to make light of the situation. But to point out that this hazard is not new. The poster was printed over 20+ years ago.

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