Which wood turning hazard is your highest priority?

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Originally Posted by BobL

I agree about the ear muffs, but if anyone can hear that "almost silent tick, tick, tick", that tells me they don't have enough air flow for dust collection happening. Even if the DC is outside the hiss of moving sufficient air flow through 6" ducting will normally be enough to mask those sounds. The quietest flow (lowest resistance) will be obtained with a bell mouth hood and even those will still make enough noise to mask the tick, tick, ticks.

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I have repeated BobL's comments to the face shield thread as it gives a very good intro to this topic,



Thank you Bob, more very good points to consider when assessing the priority of controls to eliminate, substitute, or minimize ALL hazards.

1. Which is your highest priority hazard in wood turning or wood machining?


2. Which hazard do you eliminate, substitute, or minimize (controls) first?


3. How does your proposed control/procedure to eliminate, substitute, or minimize one hazard affect another hazard or control?

Is the risk to you higher from a potential hit in the head from a large mass high speed flying object or long term hearing, respiratory or other problems?



Potential hits from flying objects must always take priority as they have the potential to kill you now or to cause a brain injury that will have profound lifestyle & health implications for you & your family. Flying objects are relatively common in wood turning, larger flying objects may be rarer but it is the potential to cause catastrophic injury that is the very significant issue here not the frequency of it occurring or the actual probability of it striking the head. That potential always remains but we can lower the risk considerably.



Respiratory issues may be an immediate, possibly even life threatening, problem with allergic reactions to certain woods or it may or will become a longer term health issue through reduced lung function. These are also serious health issues that may prove catastrophic however the period over which they occur may not initially be apparent.



The hearing issues may or will become longer term health & lifestyle issues.



Other very common injuries like a foreign body in the eye, cuts, contusions are also a high priority because of the relative frequency of them occurring and the potential to do significant harm. The loss of an appendage, one or both eyes is also catastrophic.



Having a process to assess the hazards and risk of them causing you harm, then working through steps to help eliminate or reduce the hazards & risk is a learned behavior and is not "common sense." The only way turners will lessen the risk to them selves is to learn how to systematically assess hazards & risk.



PPE items like face shields perform dual hazard control roles. They are actually a high order engineered control for preventing damage to face/eyes from very common lower mass flying objects as they intervene in the path between the hazard & the operator. Then they are a lower order secondary control used to minimize the harm from larger flying objects. The primary control for flying objects should be to eliminate them from occurring in the first place; or attempting to minimize harm by placing guards between the work piece & the operator (not practical for hand turning); following accepted "safe working procedures"; continuously monitoring progress; then using PPE to further minimize harm & lower the residual risk.



Each turner can only make these decisions for themselves. At the moment there is no regulator saying you must do .....



What we do have available is industry codes of practice/conduct for wood machining that give hobbyists very good guidance on what hazards to look for, how to control the hazards, & what they should be doing in their own workshops, sheds etc.



http://ift.tt/1rdSGy6

http://ift.tt/1rfEeqA are pretty typical of the wealth of info available on industry safety programs



Do a google search for "Code of practice wood machining" plus your State should bring up some interesting reading.