"a worker's hand was cut off...."

 

Amputations in our industry is a growing issue. The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog has posted incident after incident involving workers failing to follow their training or skipping steps resulting in an amputation. Here is a recent incident emphasizing the need for further awareness in our plants:

An accident occurred in the regional center at a metalwork assembly plant one day during the 2nd week of April 2021.

The 55-year-old worker was in the cutting workshop where he cut an aluminum profile on a (make and model of saw was omitted) cantilever miter saw

In the course of work, the officials of the enterprise violated labor protection requirements.

As a result, during work, the man received injuries to his hand. The experts considered it to be serious harm to health.

According to the press service of the Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation in the (name omitted) Region, a criminal case was opened under Part 1 of Article 143 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

We pray that this worker recovers from his injuries. We pray that he was taken with his severed hand to a hospital for surgery. Long ago in the industrial town we were raised in was a food processing plant. It was routine that a worker would have a hand severed during production of the final food product. How routine was it? It was so routine that the food company had a procedure if an arm was cut off. The procedure was to take the severed arm, wrap it in a clean towel and place it in a cooler with ice. The cooler with ice and clean towel was present during every shift. The local trauma hospital (with 2 km) had a surgeon on staff for surgeries such as reattaching amputations. The workers would have their hand reattached and most went back to work when the fully healed. This was so routine that the local news (tv and print) stopped reporting it. How routine? Maybe a few times a year.

We purposely omitted the make and model of the saw. Why? Because it comes with a safety guard. We assume that the safety guard was removed so larger diameter items could be processed. We do not place blame on the saw manufacturer per se. That could change in the future after an investigative report on this incident is released. But, in our experience amputations in this manner occur when the safety mechanisms on the machinery were removed.

The Aluminium Times Magazine wrote about the importance of machinery guards. The articles can be downloaded here:

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