Hand injuries are the No.1 preventable industrial accident around the world.
Keeping workers safe takes a hands-on approach
So, if they’re preventable, why are hand injuries so common? And how have some companies reduced their hand injuries by 50% — even 90%? Believe it or not, the answer isn’t gloves. PPE isn’t the first line of defense against hand injuries. Rather, reducing the incidence of hand injuries in a workplace is best achieved through a process of re-evaluating and redesigning a safety program using the hierarchy of controls.
Emphasizing hand safety in O&G sectors
In the O&G industry, hand safety is a critical concern as workers are constantly exposed to various hazards such as heavy machinery, sharp objects and flame. The risks in this sector are high, with hand injuries being a frequent occurrence due to the complex nature of tasks and harsh working environments. Addressing these risks and understanding how to prevent hand injuries is essential for ensuring the well-being of employees, maintaining efficient operations and complying with safety regulations.
Job and field-level hazard assessments are opportune times to identify hand dangers using the hierarchy of safety controls. Listed by priority, from most effective to least, the safety controls consist of elimination, substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls and PPE. To address the risks to hands more fully, hazard assessments must describe the nature of the hazards.
Reducing the incidence of hand injuries in a workplace is best achieved through a process of reevaluating and redesigning a safety program using the hierarchy of controls. Hand safety is more than just wearing gloves, it is preventing risks to hands in the first place.
Fostering safety culture on the jobsite
Safety culture begins with safe practices and procedures. Employers should establish safe work practices (SWP) and safe job procedures (SJP) to address significant hazards or risks involved in routine tasks. SWP outlines the safety procedures of how to perform a task with minimal risk to people, equipment, materials, the environment and processes. SJP are the series of specific steps that guide a worker to complete a task from start to finish. Both SWP and SJP should also detail what types of gloves are required. Together, they reduce risk by minimizing potential exposure to dangers in performing a task.
It is management’s responsibility to provide training for workers to follow these procedures, but workers should be involved in developing safe work practices as well.
While hazard assessments, safe work practices and operating instructions are important to guide and keep workers safe, they often reflect overly optimistic work conditions. Workers seldom operate in the ideal environments that these instructions were developed for, challenging workers and supervisors to balance the competing pressures of schedule, quality, cost and safety. They are often reduced to doing their best to satisfy the pressures of one or more — at the expense of sacrificing others.
Employers who foster a culture of safety and have systems to help workers assess hazards will better balance these pressures and reduce lost time due to accidents. Employers will be rewarded with more engaged employees, higher productivity and fewer incidents when workers are trained to exercise good judgment and are treated fairly when mistakes happen.
Learning from incidents, establishing useful metrics
Workers should report all hand injuries and near misses to employers for treatment and investigation. Injury data is a lagging indicator that measures a company’s health and safety performance by tracking accident statistics. These metrics evaluate the overall past effectiveness of a workplace health and safety program.
Leading indicators that are connected to specific occupational health and safety program goals introduce a real level of accountability, and it’s important to establish these metrics based on impact. For example, don’t just track attendance of safety meetings and training sessions but measure the impact of the meeting by determining the number of people who met the key learning objectives.
Regarding leading indicators for hand safety, consider tracking when gloves are:
• Not worn when they should have been
• Worn near entanglement hazards or contrary to company rules and equipment specifications
• Worn past their service life or damaged
• Not appropriate for the hazard
• Reviewed in safety meetings
• Effective at preventing hand injuries and, if ineffective, then why?
Workers should not have to choose between comfort and safety. This is why Ontario-based Superior Glove developed the manufacturing and R&D capabilities to support a common goal of engineering safety gloves that maximize protection without compromising worker comfort — in other words, safety gloves that workers want to wear.
Making R&D the foundation of product innovation
For over 100 years, Superior Glove has engineered and manufactured innovative, high-quality hand and arm protection and complementary PPE for every major industry, growing from humble beginnings to a global leader.
Keeping workers safe takes a hands-on approach
Superior Glove fully believes in worker protection, investing in its in-house R&D and testing facilities and designing its products. The company’s state-of-the-art R&D facility is where new glove concepts and custom design solutions are materialized to make the gloves more comfortable without compromising on essential hazard protection.
Superior Glove owns and operates four manufacturing facilities, three in Canada and one in Honduras, that are vertically integrated from fiber to final product in several product categories. The company’s engineered yarn, manufactured from its facilities in Canada and Honduras, makes it possible to achieve high protection — whether it’s abrasion, cut or puncture — in comfortable, form-fitting gloves that can perform tasks that require dexterity. This way, workers can stay safe throughout the workday and not have to put their hands at risk by removing gloves to perform tactile tasks.
Both the company’s R&D and manufacturing practices are atypical in the PPE industry, which has made the company stand out as a long-time innovator and leader in industrial hand-safety manufacturing.
Prioritizing quality control in manufacturing
Not all safety gloves protect equally, which is why Superior Glove’s engineers are always in search of ways to improve products for end-user applications. Gloves designed for one type of hazard may not sufficiently protect against another, even though they may look similar. Because the nature of the hazard will affect the selection of gloves, industry standards refer to specific test methods to define varying protection levels.
Safety gloves and sleeves produced in Superior Glove’s manufacturing facilities go through in-house testing throughout the manufacturing process. The in-house testing lab is equipped with state-of-the-art testing equipment and a rigorous testing process that follows American National Standards Institute/International Safety Equipment Association (ANSI/ISEA) 2016 standards or American Society for Testing and Materials test methods. Standard ANSI tests covered in this lab include cut, puncture — standard and hypodermic — conductive heat, abrasion, impact and vertical flame test. Additionally, the company conducts additional internal custom tests, such as vibration tests, grip tests, contact cold and marring. Samples are tested, improved upon and retested until the desired protection and comfort level is achieved. All these products are then tested through third-party independent testing to confirm the in-house testing results and ensure the products meet safety standards. All iterations are conducted before finally going into manufacturing.
Keeping safety top-of-mind, all the time
Constantly pushing boundaries to innovate and deliver results, Superior Glove goes past easy and obvious solutions. Because PPE is considered the last line of defense, the company offers free resources and services to help companies develop safety programs that go beyond PPE. Superior Glove partners with the O&G industry from the top of the hierarchy and works to explore options that address each level on the way down to PPE, to help eliminate and reduce injuries through non-PPE changes. Superior Glove addresses the hazards that remain with appropriate PPE by offering free one-on-one consultations and sample programs that let a team try before it buys.
For more information, visit superiorglove.com.
