Power Tools And Safety

Power tools have mostly taken over from hand tools all around the world, because they allow individuals to get more work done in an alloted period of time. Power tools work a lot more quickly than hand tools and without the operative having to expend much energy having to turn a handle or push a saw.

However, the increased productivity that power tools deliver comes at a cost: 1] you have to pay for the electricity that drives the equipment and 2] there is an increased risk to the operative's health and safety. The price of the electricity should be more than easily covered by the increased productivity, but health and safety is often disregarded until it is too late.

Individuals seem to not realize the potential dangers of an inexperienced person using a power tool. For example, a slip with a hand saw, usually means an ugly joint, but a slip with a power saw can cost a finger; a miss when hammering a nail home can cost a bruised finger or an ugly dent, but a slip with a nail gun can be like having a bullet in the leg.

This is why insurance businesses have made it crucial for businesses employing trades people to send their workers on health and safety courses. Claims from inexpert workers was getting ridiculous as inexpert trades people abandonned their old hand tool in favour of the powered alternative.

It caused a great deal of controversy in the Eighties and Nineties in the building industry among employers and workers alike to have to send people on courses about how to use power tools. In Britain, employers were not allowed to let a carpenter use a rotary saw, for example, unless he or she could prove that they had been taught to use one. Most individuals were of the opinion that the health and safety people had gone too far.

But there were not so many accidents; less time off work due to injury and fewer claims against the insurance firms.

There was huge resistance in our building company from the workforce, when we declared that nobody could sign out a power tool unless he/she had a valid safety certificate to confirm training in the use of that particular article of apparatus.

We also had a joinery shop, where traditionally each carpenter could go to create anything he needed. Then this policy came in and just one carpenter out of forty was allowed to use the tools. All of a sudden there was a rush to get safety certificates. The new regulations had hurt people's pride.

They thought that they were being told that they did not know their trade, but once they were disqualified from using power tools, they were made to look like inexpert apprentices again. So there was a rush to get a certificate and power tool companies would send a safety expert to the workshop to train all the relevant tradesmen in the use of their power tools free of charge and hand out certificates.

Then our company decided to get their ISO 9000 certificate and power tools had to be given certificates of inspection too. So now we had to employ someone to look after the power tools.

Just tradesmen with certificates of competence could sign out a power tool and a power tool could only be signed out if it had a certificate to prove that it had been passed 'safe to use' within the last two months. All power tools had to have a certificate of reliability attached to it, a set of safety rules and a pair of safety glasses. That covered the firm from accusations of negligence.

That was 15-20 years ago in the building industry in the UK. I am not relating all this as a history lesson, but more to point out that individuals can go to a store and buy or hire very dangerous power tools without having to prove competence. Contractors at work have to prove that they and the tools are up to the job, but the public does not.

I am not in favour of another layer of bureaucracy, but I do want to make people aware of the risk of not knowing how to use power tools properly and without even the most basic safety equipment.

Do not use power tools without safety glasses is the first rule. Protect your eyes from splinters and flying debris at all costs. A professional would, so so ought you.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a number of subjects, but is now involved with RX Safety Glasses. If you would like to know more, please visit our site at Safety Glasses Bifocal