Machinery

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Serious injuries and even death can occur if overhead cranes aren’t inspected and properly used.

Simply put, “lockout/tagout is a safety procedure used to make sure equipment and machines are properly shut off and not able to start during maintenance or repair work,” the Texas Department of Insurance says. “This is known as controlling hazardous energy.”

Do your employees use gas-powered equipment at work? If so, they may be exposed to carbon monoxide.

Contact with electricity is one of the leading causes of fatalities in construction, according to OSHA.

Nearly half of all work-related injuries involving mechanical power presses result in amputation, statistics compiled by OSHA show. Around 60% of amputations involve a worker’s fingers or arm getting caught or compressed by a press or other machinery such as a conveyer, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Cave-ins during excavation work, body parts being pulled into unguarded machinery, standing within the swing radius of cranes and other equipment, and being caught between a piece of equipment and a fixed object – all of these are examples of caught-in or caught-between incidents that can occur at work.

A pinch point is “any point at which it is possible for a person or part of a person’s body to be caught between moving parts of a machine, or between the moving and stationary parts of a machine, or between material and any part of the machine,” states the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Woodworking machines – with their moving parts and sharp blades – can be extremely dangerous if not used correctly. Amputations, blindness and lacerations are common injuries related to working with these machines.

Forklifts are commonplace around construction sites, warehouses and factories. But these powered industrial trucks can be deadly if used improperly, and they require respect and diligence for safe operation.

Wood chippers and shredders are powerful machines. Ohio State University cautions that the knives used in wood chippers as well as in shredders can easily slice through fresh wood, and the engines are powerful enough to grind tree limbs and entire branches.