Arm yourself with safety tips before you pick up that nail gun

Forty-five year old Patrick Scanlan never thought he would become an emergency-room statistic. The Nyack, N.Y. contractor was using a nail gun last June when it misfired, leading a nail to ricochet off the wall and bounce into his eye. Scanlan was hospitalized and then out of work for six weeks as his eye recovered. “To tell you the truth, I would never have imagined that would happen,” he said.

Now, he says, everyone who works with him has to wear safety glasses when they use a nail gun. “Everybody hates me for it. They get all covered with dust and slow you down. But it doesn’t matter, if you want to work with me, you have to wear them.”

Statistics show that Scanlan is not alone. The widespread availability of relatively inexpensive nail guns has coincided with a surge of injuries among consumers, according to a recently released study in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Consumer injuries from nail guns that prompted emergency-room visits more than tripled between 1991 and 2005, from an average 4,200 a year to 14,800, the study said.

In total, there were total 37,000 emergency-room nail gun related injuries, with consumers accounting for about 40 percent; construction workers like Scanlan accounted for the rest. (Injury rates among professionals have been largely flat, suggesting that training, experience and regular use of safety equipment have helped keep them out of emergency rooms.)

The study suggests that the increased number of injuries stems in part from the design of the dual-action firing mechanism — in which the manual trigger and nose contact element are both depressed for a nail to be discharged to allow for the rapid fire of nails and speedier production.

The study urges consumers to buy nail guns that use a sequential-trip trigger, which requires the nose contact to be depressed before the manual trigger, rather than simultaneously. Thus, it’s less likely for unintentional nails to be discharged.  If you already have a gun, the study suggests you buy a kit to convert the nail gun to the safer sequential mode.

Other important precautions include wearing sturdy clothing and heavy footwear. And, as Scanlan says, don't skimp on eye protection. Being blind in his eye for five weeks as he recovered “was definitely an eye opening experience.”

Get advice on buying and using power tools at ConsumerReports.org.

Comments

[Andrew McIntosh]

Readers and tool users interested in nail gun safety should take a look at a series of investigative reports by The Sacramento Bee newspaper in Nothern california, including multimedia graphics on how the tools works, three videos about accidents and safety practices and a searchable database of accidents in California.

The package also includes a 20 year chronology of calls by medicial researchers and forensic engineers for nail gun makers to adopt the safer sequential trigger firing systems to curb injuries, including some that have killed people.

Check it out here: http://www.sacbee.com/511/story/82548.html