Guns Nail Construction Workers
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"If you are not paying attention, you can easily shoot yourself" with a nail gun, according to a carpenter in Modesto, California. "I have been shot a few times." While not life-threatening, nail gun injuries often require time off, pose infection risks and sometimes mean visits to emergency rooms. While the occasional nail gun injury goes with the job, many workers could better avoid them by putting speed above safety. It’s a big headache for many employers, according to a recent story in the local newspaper, the Modesto Bee.
Though he’s never missed work because of a nail gun injury, the carpenter did once put a three-quarter-inch nail through the palm of his hand. He used a hammer to remove the nail, taped the wound and went back to work.
Depending on where the nail enters the worker’s body, soldiering on may not be an option. Contractors and co-workers said nail injuries to the thigh or foot usually mean missed work and emergency room care.
Recalling an employee who shot a nail gun into his foot, a roofing contractor said the accident could have been more dangerous and was probably preventable.
"Anytime someone shoots himself in the foot, everybody wonders how that happened," the owner said, noting that the injured man was a good worker who might have become distracted. "You would have to be working and look away to shoot yourself in the foot.”
Because of the inherent dangers of roofing – working at heights and on slopes, plus the industry tradition of paying for work completion rather than by the hour, encouraging employees to cut corners for work speed, thus making up to $55 per hour – this contractor emphasizes safety training about puncture wounds from nail guns, as well as how to prevent falls and heat stroke.
The company allows workers to use only semiautomatic nail guns, which are safer than some other types because they have single-shot triggers. Most nail gun injuries have been attributed to contact trip guns, which allow a worker to hold down the trigger and shoot nails by bumping the muzzle on a surface.
The carpenter said some workers remove the safety springs from guns so they can work faster. He has seen it done most often by temporary workers. The roofing contractor said he fires anyone who alters a nail gun.
Employers say nail gun accidents can be minimized by following the manufacturer's guidelines and training workers to use the guns correctly. Many companies require all new hires to complete safety training, and nail gun use is always part of that training.
One construction company occasionally found carpenters using the contact trip guns for jobs in which they’d mandated the safer single shot guns. They finally found a solution that worked – painting all the single shot guns bright red, making it easy for foremen to spot any worker using the wrong kind of nail gun.