Canadian Occupational Safety

J acob Ferguson* worked at a small, family-owned trucking company in Grey County, Ont., and one day he was greasing a pin on a truck. He was manipulating the hose to reach the grease nipple when a tiny pinhole burst through the hose and grease was injected into the side of his fi nger. "It felt like my hand blew off," he says. "When I squeezed my fi nger, the grease would come right out of the hole, and it swelled to three times the normal size." After four hours, Ferguson was convinced to go to the hospital. The surgeon had to cut the full length of the fi nger, remove the grease and disinfect the wound, which was left open to heal. Ferguson was in the hospital for four days on heavy antibiotics. While he now has full use of his hand and fi ngers, the nerve endings in most of his fi ngers are completely gone. Hydraulic fl uid injection injuries, like what Ferguson sustained, are caused by a release of pres- surized hydraulic fl uid penetrating the skin. A pinhole-sized leak can travel at the same velocity as a bullet — 600 feet per second, says Timothy Ley, owner of FutureProof Consulting in Freelton, Ont. "If a bullet went through your hand or arm or something, it's a blunt force injury. It will just blast its way through fl esh and tissue. Well, think of the same thing now with a stream of high pressure fl uid," says Ley. "It basically batters its way through tissue and fl esh, and it can hit bones and bounce around and maybe come out the other side or lose its energy as it dissipates within the hand or the arm or the leg, but it's basically a blunt force trauma." According to Ley's research, more than nine per cent of mine safety incidents in the United States involve fl uid power systems, with one per cent resulting in serious injury or death. A 2010 survey of one-half of the mines in New South Wales, Australia, identifi ed 1,186 fl uid releases from the previous three years. Of those, 152 were direct contact incidents — three times as many as electric shock incidents — and 3.3 per cent resulted in serious injury or death, says Ley. "When I talk to experienced people, almost inevitably they all know of someone who has had an injection injury or they've heard of it in their company, their industry, somewhere, at their site; they've heard of it," he says. Employers in the mining industry need to be particularly aware of this risk because their workers are exposed to hydraulics in every level of mining, every day. "There's defi nitely a higher potential for this type of injury," says Sarah Nicoll, process control technician and member of the joint health and safety committee at Walker Industries in Niagara Falls, Ont. "We have loaders, haul trucks, drills and much of the actual crushing components, they all operate using hydraulics." While fl uid as low as 100 pounds per square inch (psi) can penetrate the skin, most hydraulic equipment in mining runs around 4,000 psi and the pressure is increasing, High usage of hydraulic systems in mining increases chances for fl uid injection injuries By Amanda Silliker surized hydraulic fl uid penetrating the skin. A pinhole-sized leak can travel at the same velocity as a bullet — 600 feet per second, says Timothy Ley, owner of FutureProof Consulting in Freelton, Ont. "If a bullet went through your hand or arm or something, it's a blunt force injury. It will just blast its way through fl esh and tissue. Well, think of the same thing now with a stream of high pressure fl uid," says Ley. "It basically batters its way through tissue and fl esh, and it can hit bones and bounce around and maybe come out the other side or lose its energy as

• Cover