Why is hand safety such an issue?

"In this industry glove clips save money..."

Hand safety should be paramount when addressing or creating a safety campaign in the construction industry. Worker's hand injuries resulting from lacerations and puncture wounds cost the construction industry well over $380 million each year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The cost of this neglected hand safety per injured worker averages over $17,000, which includes costs for medical bills, lost time (around four to five days per incident), downtime, clean up and legal matters.

Injuries are more frequent in this industry because 58 percent of workers perform tasks barehanded. Among those remaining who do wear gloves or have gloves provided, at least 50% remove their gloves once or more during the day so they can complete certain tasks, and when they remove their gloves there is a high risk that the gloves will be left or forgotten at the job site. So workers do not even have their gloves with them when they move on to their next job. All of this data shows that almost 80% of workers in the construction/DIY industry do not wear gloves some time if at all during the day.

In an article in Occupational Environmental Medicine, Sorock et al showed this result from a survey of injured workers in the northeastern United States: "...Wearing gloves reduced the relative risk of injury by 60 percent...". This means that medical costs, lost man hours and indemnity would all be reduced by well over half if workers would use the gloves that they are provided. So, how does a company go about improving the compliance with their hand safety regulations?

A recent addition to PPE arsenal to address this hand safety issue is the glove clip. The glove clip attaches to a belt loop, belt or harness, and its primary purpose is keep the gloves that the worker is required to ware near them at all times. When the worker removes their gloves, the gloves go on the glove clip, and there they stay until they are needed again. A study done in an industrial plant in Houston Texas showed that with just the implementation of the glove clip into their hand safety program, hand injury incidences were reduced by 87%, and they stayed that low for each additional year they were used.

Glove clips save money, downtime, and lost man-hours. For more information on glove clips and other hand safety products please visit this link: Hand Safety Products