SAFETY SOLUTIONS: Machine Guarding

Recently, two companies that work with plastic asked us to come to their facility to conduct a safety audit. We also conducted a machine guarding course to educate their management team, maintenance personnel and safety committees. The training emphasized the OSHA standards for machine safeguarding and lockout and tagout. Both employers recently had amputations on their machines and OSHA subsequently paid them a visit. After OSHA arrived on the scene they ended up issuing citations and penalties to these two employers. In both cases the penalties were in excess of $500,000.00 and to make matters worse, the employers were required to fix the machines in record-breaking time. And you can bet the required downtime to correct all of these machine hazards hurt the manufacturing schedule.

Plastics fabricating machines are complex pieces of equipment that require certain specialty guards to protect employees from nip points, numerous moving parts and exposure to high voltage and high temperatures. Serious injuries including fatalities, amputations, avulsions, burns, cuts bruises can occur during operation. Such injuries may result from guards that are missing, improperly installed, removed or bypassed.

Normally an accident occurs when an employee reaches into an unguarded portion of the machine. Remember to have a machine that is properly guarded, the employee must not be able to reach over, under, around or through the machine guard and be able to reach the danger zone or point of operation on the machine. Injuries that can occur include; amputations, avulsions (de-gloving, considered a near-miss to amputations), fractures, burns and in extreme cases death.

Corrective measures include instructing their employees to read the owners/operators manuals and to bring unsafe conditions to the attention of their supervisors. It should also be company policy that employees:

• Never attempt to reach around, under, over or through a guard. If a person standing on the floor can reach over the machine or machine guard into the point of operation, the employer should install new guarding or modify the existing guarding to prevent that from occurring. One common approach is to install a top guard that is either fixed or interlocked, depending on the need for access to the work area.
• Never remove, alter or attempt to otherwise bypass a safety interlock.
• Do not remove or open a fixed guard for normal operating tasks.
• Provide training on the safety hazards and features of the machinery for all employees who will potentially operate it.

Training And Education

• Developing training addressing machine safety and safe ergonomic practices, to be delivered in conferences, meetings and through SPI’s Plastics Learning Network.
• Outreach and communication.
• Encouraging the continuing development of ergonomic guidelines by the plastics industry.
• Jointly developing and disseminating information and guidance on workplace safety and health issues, including but not limited to amputation and ergonomic hazards and control mechanisms such as lock-out/tag-out and machine guarding through SPI workshops, meetings and print and electronic media.
• Promoting OSHA’s cooperative programs within the industry.

Accomplishments

The first year of the SPI/OSHA alliance brought national recognition of the plastics industry’s focus on improving workplace safety. OSHA has a web page developed as a product of the alliance, noting that more than 1.5 million workers in the U.S. plastics industry stand to benefit from this alliance. Click on www.osha.gov/SLTC/plastics/index. html to access the OSHA Assitance for the Plastics Industry website. It provides links to:

• Safety and health information about the plastics industry.
• Standards that apply to plastics processing.
• Information about hazards and solutions.
• Focused links to all tools developed under the alliance.

OSHA through the alliance with the SPI developed several programs available and offers them as PowerPoint presentations. See www.plasticsindustrytraining.org to download the presentations.

If you have questions regarding workplace safety, please visit our website at www.podojilconsulting.com where you will find helpful information on a variety of topics. Until next time, take care and please remember; “It is either safe or it is unsafe” and in my opinion it is better to be safe than sorry.

For more information, click on the author biography at the top of this page.