In Ontario, the OH&SA sets out the law and the Ministry of Labour enforces it. It’s probably something like this in the States and elsewhere.
One of the many problems here is that you get Ministry officials who are somewhat incompetent, combined with regulations that are too loosey-goosey and open to interpretation, or too rigidly defined.
Say the Ministry goes into a plant to do an inspection. Say it’s a fabrications shop and they’re cutting odd sizes of what-have-you. Say they’re using a band saw and have to lift the safety bar (or whatever) out of the way to be able to position the material correctly. (How often does this type of thing happen-people having no choice but to ignore or negate safety features on equipment in order to do their jobs) So the Ministry guy looks in the book and says “Well, you have two choices: You either leave the built-in safety feature in place, or you use some kind of Personal Protective Equipment (otherwise known as “gloves” in this case, heh) to protect your hands from being eaten by the band saw. I’ll have to shut down this line until you comply. Buh-bye.” Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as any pair of gloves known to man which will protect your hands from a bandsaw.
The safety guy & most people in the plant might know this. The Ministry guy doesn’t and the owner finds out quick. A mad search may or may not ensue for band-saw proof gloves which don’t exist. Bottom line is, the plant can’t get the line going until this gets sorted out and loses the order/account. People get laid off, etc.
Our companys sells personal safety equipment and our clients all usually have some sort of joyful story like this.
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Actually, there are gloves to protect you from different sorts of blades. I worked for a company that had fabric cutters and they had those gloves so you could use you hand to control and reposition the fabric. It is sort of like a very fine chain mail and does its job well.
The cutting tools was more like a circular saw though, rather than a band saw, the spinning disc part didn’t have teeth, it was a blade (similar to the blades that slice meat.) Extremely sharp.
The gloves are quite expensive. I don’t know how well it would work with a saw blade that had teeth though (the teeth would just snag the rings of the mail and would most likely pull your hand further into the line of ouch.) The biggest complaint was that the workers said it was “clumsy.”
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Well, mesh gloves will protect your hand from some blades but I wouldn’t want to risk it with a bandsaw blade. You are right on the money about what could happen should the teeth of the blade snag a mesh glove. Ouch. I know of no glove that I would be anywhere near comfortable recommending as “protection” from a bandsaw blade. You just never know, people find ways to hurt themselves through lack of judgement all the time.
Gloves like this are never guaranteed 100% cut-proof anyway. Cut-resistant is about the best guarantee you will get from any manufacturer that I know of. The idea is to give the user a small margin of time to react (hopefully). I believe this is the principle behind such things as chain-saw chaps and the like.
Manufacturers are somewhat protected by due-diligence laws but do everything in their power to mitigate their potential liability. If they won’t guarantee something, we sure as heck aren’t going to either.
Anyhow the point is that Ministry officials, as well-meaning as they sometimes are (and usually aren’t) cause more problems than they solve. Sometimes.
JoeY P - its not so much the actual calling of fire brigades - its more about being the one person on the floor who knows exactly how to use a fire-extinguisher on a small fire (Such as a bin) and which fire extinguisher to use when.
In the event of a major fire, my responsibility would be to ensure that my floor was clear (i.e. be the last person to leave) and report this fact to the co-ordinator at the meeting point.
Of course i know all this now - since they eventually got around to telling me/providing training.
I think if a worst case scenario had happened, then the responsibility for any bad stuff would have been with them for not notifying me that i had been chosen and for not seeing that i had been suitably trained.
Uh, that’s one I happen to agree with if you live in an earthquake prone area. An earthquake doesn’t move furniture; it moves you and your building while the bookcase stays in the same place.
Anyway, someone from a university in Britain told me that office swivel chairs with 4 legs are not allowed there. Apparently you need 5 legs for safety.
Just thought I’d drive by to offer this little gem.
Years ago, when I worked for a German auto manufacturer in South Carolina… I created the quarterly reports for our management (I worked for one of the in-house subcontractors) to report accidents to the plant managers. Once, the meeting stopped completely while the plant execs read out loud our accident report for one less-than-brilliant employee:
“Did this employee really hit himself in the head with a hammer?”
Peals of laughter around the room.
“Um. Yeah. He was adjusting fixtures and decided to pound on them from the bottom up instead of banging the hammer in a downward motion.”
We had to teach him how to properly use a hammer. Lucky for us, he was finally fired when he spit on the floor in front of a German exec. (Which was also probably a safety violation: slip/trip/fall hazard.)
That one’s just priceless. You just KNOW in the ex-employee’s re-telling of “why he got fired,” he’ll come across sounding like a victim.
Update to the situation here at work: If the safety “fixes” are to save the company money, it may take a while to break even. Here in Engineering, we need all the storage space we can get, but they’re removing many bookshelves and requiring us to remove anything under the desks. So, to help maintain the shelf space we need, they are performing cubicle modifications (new cubicle-mounted shelving, wall extensions for privacy the old bookshelves had provided, etc.). Cubicle hardware just don’t come cheap.
And the lighting issue may, I think, be resolved. All the lights above will be reconnected, but to maintain correct CRT viewing lighting levels, we’ll be allowed to construct cardboard “hoods” over the cubicle corner housing our monitors. Laughable.
This is the exact type of thinking exhibited by the people who think that urine testing (for drugs ingested long ago at home just before sleep time) is absolutely essential for workplace safety. Now for school safety. I wouldn’t treat children the way USA treats adults.
