Important Knife Safety Guidelines for Safety Knife Users

Accidents at Work Due to Cuts

The Hand Safety Report of 2016/17 shown that 70,116 employees encountered non-fatal injuries at work. Regarding this, 20% were caused by handling-related injuries.

The most common type of injury is cuts and lacerations. The risk of these types of injuries are often overlooked, however, they can have significant implications for staff and therefore can end up being a massive cost to any business.

Most of these accidents (and consequently lost time) can be avoidable. A large amount of cutting injuries, suffered in the workplace, are caused by tools that are not intended for the appropriate action.

Generic kitchen scissors and craft knives are too often used in the place of conventional safety knives. Using the appropriate tools for the right kind of application is, first and foremost, the most important step in avoiding occupational accidents. In this case, selecting the right kind of safety knife can help to reduce accidents and injuries in the workplace.

Ways to Protect Your Employees from Knife Accidents:

• All safety knives and cutters should have a good, non-slip grip.

• Use only box cutter knives with sharp, undamaged blades.

• When the cutting process starts, with the blade in the material, take your thumb off the blade handle.

• Hold the material so that it does not wobble, slip or tip away.

• Lead the safety blade away from the holding hand
• Hold tensioned tapes with your free hand so they do not snap away.

• Be aware of the blade change and proceed according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

• Replaced blades are still sharp – do not throw them in the trash. Instead use a safety container for blade disposal.

• Safe storage, provision and handling should be taken into consideration.

• Do not just put the safety knife and cutter in your pocket, use the right accessories.

• Do not put safety knives or cutters in your pockets. Accessories such as lanyards and yoyos are ideal for carrying safety cutters.

• Make sure there is sufficient lighting in the workplace.

• Ensure that employees are regularly trained, and that this training procedure is kept up to date.

Safety Knife and the Occupational Safety Act

There are health and safety legal laws that must be acted upon by both the employee and employer, to help improve and maintain the safety of employees in the workplace legislated by HSE (The Health and Safety Executive).

Accordingly, employers are required to assess the risk to health at work and are responsible to take appropriate occupational safety measures on this basis. For this, we have published a further article on the risk assessment of knives

In return, the employees have a duty to follow the instructions given. If they do not do so, it leads to labour law consequences – up to the termination without notice.