The Need for Industrial Impact Protection

It’s official – hands and fingers are the most injured part of the body at work.  

According to the United States National Safety Council, just over 1 in 5 (22.2%) of all workplace injuries leading to days off work, job transfers, or restrictions were hand and finger injuries. 

What’s more, 17.3% of all injuries were caused by hands and fingers getting caught in, struck by, or struck against equipment – a total of well over half a million injuries each year. 

At the same time, the UK’s Health and Safety Executive reports that 17% of all non-fatal injuries at work in the UK were caused by Handling, Lifting or Carrying. This is bad enough, but certain sectors are even worse. 

Take the global oil and gas sector, for example. According to 2023 figures from the International Association of Drilling Contractors, almost half (41.8%) of all recordable incidents on drilling rigs in 2023 were hand and finger injuries. 

 Source: International Association of Drilling Contractors, 2023 figures 

27.9% of recordable incidents were caused by getting caught between or in equipment. 27.4% of them were caused by being struck by heavy equipment. 

Source: International Association of Drilling Contractors, 2023 figures 

As Offshore Energies UK puts it: “Bone fractures, strains/sprains and lacerations continue to account for the majority of accident outcomes [in UK offshore oil and gas], with hands and fingers being the most frequently injured parts of the body.” 

With US estimates putting the average cost of a workplace hand injury at $23,247, clearly employers can’t rest on their laurels when it comes to protecting their workers’ hands and fingers.  

But we’ve known this for some time. In fact, the Offshore Energies UK report quoted above is interesting because it highlights how hands and fingers remain the most frequently injured parts of the body in offshore oil and gas against a backdrop of overall incidents creeping upwards each year since 2020.  

The statistics above for UK offshore oil and gas injuries show significant numbers of lifting and handling injuries and injuries involving being struck by an object. And that’s not to mention several involving striking against something or involving contact with machinery. All of which have a high likelihood of involving hands and fingers in impact-related injuries. 

This suggests that while overall worker safety remains an important priority in oil and gas, the industry is still dangerous – particularly for workers’ hands.  

The importance of having the right personal protection equipment 

Certainly, these statistics show the importance for workers of wearing impact protection gloves, particularly since this is a relatively new safety category in many industries. In US oil and gas, for example, impact protection was first introduced as a concept in 2007, and official industry-wide standard were not published until 2019.  

It’s true that the UK and European Union have had the EN388:2003 Protective Gloves Against Mechanical Risk standard in place across all industries since 2003. However, impact protection was not added to the list of risks tested until 2016 – only eight years ago! In the world of workplace safety regulation therefore, impact protection remains a fairly recent idea. 

This is why it’s so important for health and safety professionals to ensure they thoroughly understand and are up to date with impact safety standards – not just because it’s important, but also because the standards are recent. If you would benefit from a refresher on the relevant impact safety standards and their history, check out our article “Setting the standard”.  

Here’s where the issue gets complicated, however. When talking to professionals in multiple industries, they swear the onsite safety standards in their sector are now so rigorously controlled that workers never take off their safety gloves. Push back on this a little, and some respond with, “Well… almost never.”  

At the same time, we’ve had written feedback on impact gloves from onsite workers who say things like: 

“Much better than current impact gloves on every level… no need to remove Collide gloves for completing all job tasks, where current gloves make it very hard to use split pins and slotted nuts.” 

“A vast improvement on the gloves we currently use. Dexterity and fit are important improvements and mean that many more tasks are achievable without having to remove gloves from hand.” 

Both of these quotes come from workers in a very tightly-regulated industry, who are theoretically overseen by a manager who is directly responsible for ensuing they wear the appropriate safety gloves at all times. Yet both suggest that this is a clear temptation to remove impact gloves if they become too restrictive.  

One could argue this implies that onsite safety managers are being insufficiently strict or careful in executing their responsibilities. But there are two other obvious possibilities to consider: 

1. Because impact protection is relatively recent, many workers feel they were able to get on perfectly well without it in the past, so they won’t let it get in the way of them doing their jobs now 

1. Workers perceive that existing impact protection gloves are simply too bulky or clumsy to allow them to work with the efficiency they require on certain tasks 

Three possible ways to solve the problem 

This means there are three possible approaches to solving this problem.  

The first is to put in place stricter controls for safety managers, with more appropriate KPIs and stricter oversight. The second is to try and educate workers on the statistical need to keep impact protection gloves on at all times, and to encourage them to take more personal responsibility for doing so.  

The third is to look at improving the impact protection gloves they’re using so that these can offer the level of impact protection needed to reduce accident frequency and severity while also being comfortable and flexible enough not to need to remove them for trickier tasks that require more dexterity.  

Approach three is the one we decided to take at Tilsatec. It has since led to the development of our new Collide-X gloves with unique KOROYD impact reduction technology, which you can read more about here.