Plastic Manufactures Rank Higher For Worker Injuries Than Other Product Manufacturers

I have been writing for this magazine for many years now, and offering advice and also offering help in inspecting your facilities or training your employees in safety, and in all of this time, I have only received three requests to answer a question from our readers. Do you really think your facility is safe and that your employees are well-trained? Do you really have your employees and maintenance personnel read and understand your equipment’s owners'/operators’ manuals?

Every day, workers across the United States and in other countries are being fatally injured in industrial accidents. A couple of months ago, I wrote an article in this magazine about forklifts and the serious accidents that happen. Now I was recently called by an attorney to handle a forklift accident where a death occurred. Do you know how much training this operator received from his employer? Well, it was a one-hour online training course.

I wrote in this magazine an article on thermoforming machine safety. Today, I read about a 38-year-old production machine operator who was fatally injured while making adjustments to a flatbed thermoforming machine at a plastics manufacturing company. The Newspaper Heading said:

“Machine operator dies after head is crushed in the machine.”

The machine operator and a coworker were making final adjustments on the oven and platen stop of the machine to run a different product. The machine operator rolled out the oven and began working inside the oven cavity while the coworker made adjustments to the top platen, about 4 feet away on the opposite side of the oven.

After calling the warning “clear,” the coworker lowered the platen by activating a pneumatic toggle so he could make a final adjustment. Discovering a small part was missing, the coworker climbed off the machine and looked for the machine operator. He found him injured under the machine. The coworker called his cell phone to the supervisor for help, and 911 was called. The victim was taken to a hospital and underwent several surgeries. He remained in a comatose state until his death 53 days following the incident.

Accidents in plastics product manufacturing remain above the average for all U.S. manufacturing. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, the rate of occupational injuries nationally was 37 percent higher for plastics processing than for all U.S. manufacturing.

Injuries and illnesses in the plastics industry result from a multitude of inherent hazards. Due to the nature of the primary raw materials used, the danger of fire and explosion is an important general hazard. Flammable gases or liquids may escape during reactions at temperatures above flash points. Adequate ventilation becomes crucial to the operations.

The majority of injuries in the plastics sector occur in plastics processing and depend almost entirely on the use of machinery. Adequate guarding is essential in compression, transfer, injection, and blow-molding machines, as well as in in-running traps between rollers in processes involving plastic sheet.

Many plastic-processing machines operate at high temperatures and cause severe burns if parts of the body come into contact with hot metal or plastics. Waste plastic material reprocessed using granulators can pose a contact hazard with the rotors through the discharge and feed openings. Again, guarding becomes important to prevent this.

Plastic machinery-related injuries are some of the worst in the industry today. Workers get caught in machines and suffer severe injuries such as crushed arms, legs, severed fingers, or blindness, and some are even killed. Can these injuries and deaths be prevented? Of course, they can, with the proper use of machine guards.

Mechanical Hazards Occur in the Following Areas

■ Point of Operation – the point where work is performed on the material, such as cutting, shaping, boring, or forming of stock.
■ Power Transmission Apparatus – all components of the mechanical system that transmit energy to the part of the machine performing the work. These components include flywheels, pulleys, belts, connecting rods, couplings, cams, spindles, chains, cranks, and gears.
■ Other Moving Parts – all parts of the machine that move while the machine is working. These can include reciprocating, rotating, and transverse moving parts, as well as feed mechanisms and auxiliary parts of the machine.

To prevent injury from any of these hazards, guards must be in place and never removed while work is in progress. Knowing how to safeguard a machine is just as important as having the machine guard itself in place. Knowing how a safeguard protects workers is just as the machine guard protects the worker from harm by:

■ Preventing contact: the guard must prevent any part of a worker’s body or clothing from making contact with dangerous moving parts.
■ Securing: All machine guards must be securely affixed to the machine to prevent tampering or removal.
■ Protecting from falling objects: a machine guard ensures that no objects can fall into moving parts and thus become deadly projectiles.
■ Creating no new hazards: an additional hazard, such as having a jagged edge or shear point, must not be created by the guard itself.
■ Creating no interference: machine guards must not impede workers in the performance of their jobs. A machine guard provides safety and enhances efficiency.

Recommended Training for Machine Operators

■ Description and identification of hazards associated with particular machines
■ How machine guards protect from the hazards involved
■ How and why machine guards are used
■ Under what circumstances, and by whom, can machine guards be removed?
■ What to do if a machine guard is missing, damaged, or does not provide adequate protection

The bottom line is, if a machine has been designed with a guard in place, do not tamper with or remove it!