3of the Most Common Industrial Injuries
Industrial injuries are often some of the most gruesome reminders of the fact that practicing caution in an industrial setting is critical for safety. From the reports and experiences of emergency medical workers and industrial factsheets, the following are some of the most common industrial injuries that afflict workers, be it on account of carelessness, a lack of safety equipment, or equipment malfunction.
Projectile Injuries
When an industrial machine is cutting into metal, stone, or any other hard object, there will at times be projectile debris bursting forth at tremendous speeds. This is precisely why industrial safety shields were introduced. They absorb the shock without damage and act as a barrier between the section where such processes are in motion, and human worker(s) in the vicinity. When a projectile shield is absent, or someone walks in front of it, there is always a chance that they will get hit by a projectile. Effects of such collisions range from cracked and shattered bones to complete dismemberments, depending on the material and the velocity at which it was traveling at the point of contact.
Burner Accidents
As the Lindberg Process explains, there are several business advantages to having a high burner turndown ratio, but in order for it to be optimized successfully, the calculations need to be on point. However, getting things wrong can result in potentially deadly accidents, which may affect one or multiple factory workers simultaneously. Ever since the auto-shutoff valve was introduced, though, burner-related accidents have shrunk in number quite noticeably. While most of the burner related accidents now have nothing to do with burner overloads, they still do occur because of:
• Neglectful gas purging prior to lighting the burner.
• Rich firing
• A failure of safety latches and other safeguard mechanisms, including the auto-shutoff valve.
• Poor high-limit controller maintenance and checks (auto-shutoff will not be triggered if the meter is malfunctioning)
Industrial Vehicle Related Accidents
Forklifts and skid steers are the prime culprits in these accidents and they mostly occur due to negligence. The said negligence can be on the owner’s part for not training an operator properly, or it could be the operator’s fault for being intoxicated on the job. At other times, it would be the victim’s own fault if they walk right into an area they should not have entered. Sometimes the equipment itself might fail, as any machine can, and then, of course, there is the ever-present danger of human error. In any situation though, they can be more deadly than car crashes, given that this is industrial equipment that weighs many times more than the average car.
Awareness is just as key to staying safe in a place with multiple machines that can kill you, as well as the safety measures themselves. Safety should always take precedence while working in any environment, which includes an indoor office as well. However, given the high mortality rate sin factory workers who get caught in industrial accidents, the need to have the strictest safety measures implemented is obvious.
