FACTS
- Crush injuries are not only confined to construction sites. Any job that involves heavy machinery, large objects, unstable structures, faulty equipment, or forklifts can potentially result in crush injuries for workers.
- Of all the types of workplace accidents that you could suffer, caught-in and caught-between situations could easily be some of the most horrific. These kinds of workplace incidents are responsible for catastrophic and often fatal injuries to workers.
- Machinery that’s not properly guarded is a safety hazard. When body parts get caught in or struck by exposed moving parts or flying objects from machines without protective guards, the results are often times disastrous. The long and horrifying list of machinery related injuries includes crushed hands and arms, severed fingers, blindness and even worse.
- The best way to prevent mechanical hazards is to remember that any machine part, function, or process that may cause injury MUST be safeguarded, and proper operator training as well as protective clothing must always be provided.
STATS
- Around 7 out of 10 caught-in/between fatalities involved workers being crushed in collapsing materials.
- Each year workers suffer 125,000 caught-in or crushed-by injuries when body parts become caught between two objects or entangled in machinery.
- 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.