Page 20 - Occupational Health & Safety, January/February 2019

HAND PROTECTION
ANSI/ISEA 138: The New Standard for Back-of-Hand Protection
Here’s how better back-of-hand protection could be boosting your bottom line.
BY RODNEY TAYLOR
The hands are a worker’s most important tool. However, the realities of hand injuries in the workplace suggest a disconnect between company ambitions to improve safety and the number of end users requiring medical treatment and/or time off to recover.
Impact-related injuries can vary widely—from a bruise to the knuckles to a severe bone fracture.
The bones and tissues in the back of the hand are especially vulnerable to impact injuries, which are common in a variety of vertical markets and end-use applications, from offshore oil and gas, construction, mining, manufacturing, and warehousing to trans- port industries.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports around 300,000 cases annually of injuries or illnesses affect- ing the upper extremities, of which 42 percent were injuries to the hand. In 2015, more than 40 percent of all recordable incidents in the oil and gas industry affected the hands, according to the International As- sociation of Drilling Contractors (IADC).
IADC figures for 2016 also show the fingers to be the most vulnerable part of the body in terms of lost time. Injuries to fingers accounted for a third of all total recordable injuries and almost 20 percent of lost-time injuries. Meanwhile, the hands and wrists accounted for around 11 percent and 10 percent, respectively.
The cost of lost time and productivity is signifi- cant, estimated by the National Safety Council to be $142 billion in the United States alone in total in 2017.
A distinguishing feature of this new standard is the inclusion of knuckles and fingers in the testing, where the EN 388 standard covers just the knuckles. The inclusion of the fingers is critical for industrial glove users, where the fingers are frequently at risk.
Reducing the Risk from Impact
Until recently there was nothing to help assess the performance of industrial gloves designed to reduce the risk of back-of-hand impact injuries.
The European hand protection standard EN 388 was updated in 2016 to include impact assessment. However, the North America market remained with- out a performance-based standard to assess glove im- pact protection.
14 Occupational Health & Safety | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019
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