subject: Two Ways To Help Prevent Cutting Your Hands In The Workplace [print this page] With almost half of all accidents in the workplace involving a knife or bladed tool it is important to be aware of the safety equipment available which can help to prevent cutting your hands, or causing any other bodily injury.
There are two main types of safety equipment to consider, including safety knives and protective gloves. However neither should be considered to be 100% able to eliminate any possible risk, and it should be important that when introducing either safety knives or work gloves into the working environment all appropriate training is provided both in the use of the equipment and any safety checks which will be necessary.
Many safety knives either have enclosed blades or retractable blades, both of which go a very long way in helping to prevent cutting your hands. Whilst the design of these safety blades is extremely good, heavy use, inappropriate use or overuse can in some cases result in damage being caused to the casing. This is why visual observations should be carried out before using any type of knife or blade in order to verify that it is still fit for purpose.
The same is true with safety gloves, although in this case it is also necessary to make sure that the most appropriate work glove for the risks involved has been selected. When using cutting tools it will obviously be important to make sure the work glove being used has been designed to protect against cutting risks. Some safety gloves are designed to withstand abrasion, or puncture injuries, and may not provide the same level of safety as that required when using bladed tools.
Whilst some bladed tools have the blade enclosed so that it can only be used by pulling or dragging along cardboard or packaging, some safety knives have a retractable blade instead. Again, some of these retractable blades automatically retract once they have been put down, or dropped.
Whilst safety knives are generally considered to help prevent cutting your hands, a number of major injuries in the workplace are actually caused by a knife being dropped, causing injuries to the chest, stomach and legs. Using an automatically retracting blade helps to reduce the likelihood of such an injury.
But whilst safety knives and safety gloves go a very long way towards helping reduce the number of accidents in the workplace which involve a sharp tool or blade, safety equipment like this should only ever be considered the final option, after all other ways of eliminating or reducing the risk have been considered and implemented.
If is possible to alter manufacturing or packaging procedures so that blades are not needed at all this is clearly preferable to using safety equipment which still necessarily involve a blade, albeit one which has been carefully designed to limit the chance of you cutting your hands or causing any other knife related injury.
