Tailgate Safety Meeting Topics – Hand Protection
The Need for Hand Protection: Hands are hurt more often than any other part of the body. If your hands were injured could you continue to be effective in your job? How would your life be affected if you lost a finger? How about if you lost your thumb? Try using any tool effectively without your thumb. What if you lost a hand? Hand injuries don’t have to occur. As talented as your hands are, they can’t think, they’re your servants, and it is up to you to think and keep them out of trouble.
Common Sense: Be sure you wear the right kind of gloves for the particular kind of work you are doing. Wear gloves when you are doing a job that needs them but not around moving machinery.
Time spent in preparing your hands for the job will not only save trouble for you but will probably save time in doing the job. I am sure that you can think of instances in your own life where you or somebody you know or love was injured because of not paying attention or not wearing the proper PPE.
Work Hazards: There are ladders to climb, rough materials to handle, objects to be stacked and stored, tools to be utilized, equipment to be operated. To come up with a list on how to protect your hands in each and every situation would be impossible. The list would be never ending.
Do the smart thing: Before you climb a ladder, begin a project, handle sharp objects, take up a tool, or start a piece of equipment, think of the accident that CAN and WILL happen unless you make sure that it doesn’t.
Apply the “what if” criteria of safety to what you are doing: What if…there are sharp burrs on the metal you are handling or the knife slips while I am stripping this wire? Will I cut myself? What if…the screw driver slips off this stubborn screw I’m trying to remove from this box in my hand? Will I punch the screwdriver through the palm of my hand? What if…that pallet of material falls off the fork lift while I am holding this gate open? Will my hands be crushed?
Selection of Gloves:
Glove selection begins with knowledge of the chemical composition of your materials. Safety Data Sheets (SDSs), with the listing of ingredients can be obtained from the intranet.
Many acids, solvents, and other liquids are capable of damaging the skin. The leading occupation disease is dermatitis. There are gloves available that can protect the hand against most hazardous exposures. Choosing the right glove for different uses can be difficult since there are such a variety of plastic and rubber gloves on the market, each with different properties. There is no one type or brand of glove which is resistant to all kinds of liquids. One brand may be able to resist turpentine, but will dissolve in xylene, while another brand may do the opposite. Other gloves while seemingly resistant to a liquid actually allow permeation of the substance’s vapor.
Summary:
Proper hand protection is required based on the task to be performed. Reference the Safety Data sheet or the PPE Matrices to determine the appropriate chemical protective glove. Leather gloves shall be used for general tasks not involving chemicals, such as climbing ladders or stairwells, operating valves and tool use. Tasks involving sharp edges require cut-resistant gloves such as Kevlar gloves.