Safe Hands

To many people, hand safety consists of wearing work gloves. While work gloves help protect hands from minor cuts and abrasions, they can’t protect you against many other kinds of injuries. Consider these:

• Electrical shock. Determine the voltage level and wear insulated gloves adequate to protect your hands from current flow.
• Deep cuts. Oddly enough, these usually happen when using a dull cutting tool. Check (or replace) any bits or blades before starting the work. Inspect hand tools to ensure the handle is secure; examine power tools to ensure the guards and guides are secure.
• Impact force. If you’ve smashed your thumb with a hammer, you know what this feels like. If you properly use a hammer, you don’t smash your thumb. Think of hand-safe ways to use all your tools. When closing a cabinet or other enclosure, always grasp the handle and never the edge (this goes for vehicle doors, too). Many impact-force injuries happen when lifting or moving something heavy, such as a motor; master the art of slinging to prevent an injury.
• Crushing force. Fingers can get crushed in many ways, such as having them under the sling when lifting a motor. Avoid using your fingers to pry under a heavy object — that’s what pry bars are for.
• Chafing, chapping, blistering. If you wash too frequently, with too high a water temperature or too harsh of a detergent, you will strip the protective oils from the skin on your hands.
• Pulled tendon or ligament. Secure your work before operating a power tool on it; never hold the piece you are cutting, grinding, or drilling. Don’t try to lift or carry things by your fingertips; use an intermediary device to better grasp the object. For example, use a plywood carry tool rather than gripping the panel from the bottom.
• Insect bites. A tick can burrow into your palm or finger without your knowing it. By the time you decide to get medical treatment, it could be amputation time (above the elbow). Wear serviceable gloves when removing foliage, handling wooden pallets, or in any other way you may be putting your hands where ticks might be.
• Chemicals. Don’t wash your hands with anything other than products made for the purpose. Using gasoline, turpentine, industrial solvents, or other toxins damages your skin. In addition, these toxins can get into your blood through absorption.
• Repetitive stress. If you are right-handed, try to learn at least one task with your left hand. For example, try operating a ratchet with your left hand. The dexterity demand is fairly low; you need to get used to how this feels. People who put their computer mouse on the left and always operate it left-handed run a much lower risk of repetitive stress on their finger ligaments.