A company experienced four serious injuries to fingers in a two-month period:

• Amputation of fingertips due to isolation not being robust for equipment being worked on.

• Finger damaged in a flywheel when trying to manually move drive belts on a blocked machine

 • Deep lacerations to fingers when reaching behind a circular saw to retrieve wood.

• Fingers badly damaged when they were trapped between a falling floor beam and fixed metal girder.

All of the incidents above had a combination of different circumstances and factors leading to the injuries. It is difficult to pinpoint any single action that will prevent further harm. However, operatives should all take a minute before commencing tasks and think about the potential for finger injuries.

Detailed below are a number of steps that if correctly followed might have prevented these accidents and will prevent further similar injuries. The precautions are:

• Always check your isolations have been effective before placing hands in machinery/ equipment

• Do not move belts/pulleys/flywheels and similar without specific tools/defined methods

• Check that you have the correct gloves (personal protective equipment) for the task

• Use push sticks/tag lines and similar as opposed to placing your hands/fingers at risk.

• Check if the risk assessment requires any specific controls to protect your hands?

Think where you put your hands and fingers – don’t place them at risk!