Man Shoots Eye With Nail Gun, Pulls It Out

[JIM]

Saw this story on the newswire:

Shoots Eye With Nail Gun, Pulls It Out Construction Worker Accidentally Shoots Himself in the Eye With Nail Gun, Then Pulls It Out

The Associated Press Mar. 4, 2005 - A construction worker accidentally shot himself in the eye with a nail gun and then pulled the 2 1/2-inch nail out of his face, according to a police report and a co-worker.

Joseluis Franco, 19, was using an air-powered, Hitachi nail gun to help build a home Wednesday when a nail bounced back and lodged in his eye, crew leader Rogelio Ocampo said. Franco was nailing a two-by-four to concrete when the nail ricocheted.

Franco was conscious when police arrived at the scene and was taken to St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, where he was treated and released. Police said Friday they don't know the condition of Franco's eye.

Originally from a town near Acapulco, Mexico, Franco has been in the construction business for about three weeks, Ocampo said.

"I don't know what's going to happen to him," Ocampo said. "I don't know if the insurance is going to cover his bills or anything." ______________________________________________________

There seems to be a high rate of these nail gun accidents happening lately. Kind of makes me glad that I don't own a nail gun.

JIM

[Tim Douglass]

More to the point, be grateful you aren't ill-trained or an idiot, which seem to be the major contributing factor in most nail-gun accidents (well, most accidents, period, as far as that goes).

"We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"

Tim Douglass

[Mortimer Schnerd, RN]

I'll bet I do.

He probably ought to consider another line of work. I don't think he has the aptitude for this one.

Worker's comp ought to cover everything. He's still going to be missing an eye. It's a damned shame.

[Roy Smith]

The real sad cases are the "ill-trained" variety. Around here, a lot of construction help is day labor. There's street corners where guys looking for work hang out. You need three pairs of hands for a day, you drive by with your truck, hold up three fingers, and three guys jump in.

You stick a tool in the guy's hand and show him where the trigger is. Safety training probably consists of "Be careful, this thing can hurt you".

[CW]

I've got two. Never had a problem. Notice that he was a three WEEK construction veteran. Training was probably non existent. Very likely an illegal immigrant, most contractors see them as expendable.

[bob]

Damn those Hitachi nail guns. Sue the bastards.

Seriously, it is easy to spot the problems with this accident:

1) shooting a nail into concrete with a nail gun points to no training for the employee. There are specialized tools for this. 2) three weeks on the job. Sounds like a day laborer to me. No training. Asking for problems. 3) originally from Mexico. Possible language barrier. I had some Indian programmers working for me once. No matter what I asked them to do, the answer was "I can do dat. I can do dat.". They could not do dat as I later found out.

[Eradicate Sampson]

Why then were they working for you if they couldn't "do dat"?

Didn't you screen them?

[Dennis Slabaugh, Hobbyist Wood]

As a Risk Management Consultant, many of the perils of "accidents waiting to happen" have been covered in this thread. I have seen just about everything in the 16 years in this business dealing with work related injuries..... over 5000 of them.

The language barrier issue, lack of training and supervision, wrong tool for the job, working too fast on a deadline, over confidence (Macho).

Most employees are trained to wear personal protective equipment. Many think they are a bother and complain that they are "More dangerous". The key is to get glasses that fit and are comfortable and are able to be worn ALL day. Not just when you THINK you might need them, because you will be injured when you are not wearing them during a task that you did not THINK you were going to get hurt.

EXAMPLE: An employee picks up a pair of side cutters to cut the medal banding on a bundle of wood. Metal springs back and hits his eye. Medical costs after one year = $98,000. His eye was saved with about a 50% loss of vision. There is a special pair of cutters designed to cut strapping that captures both sides of he strap with the cutting blade in between to hold both sides of the band when it is cut. Price: less than $25.00

Lastly, keep in mind that an eye injury from a projectile many not put your eye out.... it may KILL you. There is no boney tissue behind the eye... just your brain. The eye socket is a direct path to an instant death.

Dennis Slabaugh Hobbyist Woodworker

[J. Clarke]

Don't know about where he worked, but in most businesses of any size the line supervisor doesn't get to make hiring decisions.

[Tim Douglass]

Comfortable protective equipment is always a problem. Back when I did carpentry full-time I wore a hard hat all the time - it was comfortable and no big deal to put on. Likewise the steel-toed boots. Ear protection came close, we used muff types, but they were always kept with the tools, so when you grabbed the saw you grabbed the muffs. For a long time I actually had a pair of muffs threaded through my hard hat suspension so they went on with the hard hat. Not always best to wear them all the time, but worked when you ran power tools most of the day.

Eye protection has always been the big bugaboo. I wear glasses and there just aren't any good forms of eye protection that are comfortable for long-term wear. Any type of goggles will fog up with the slightest exertion, not to mention the amount of distortion they offer. Face shields are a real pain except in specialized applications like turning. I never did find a good compromise other than polycarbonate lenses in the prescription glasses - they just get so scratched in a week or so that they are useless, and there goes a couple hundred dollars on new lenses.

Dust protection is another difficult one, especially for those of us of a hirsute inclination. Dust masks work OK for most stuff, but you have to get to some real dollars to get something that is useful for organic vapors. Generally you are looking at either a hood type arrangement or something blowing filtered air past your face and hoping the pressure differential will keep the nasties away.

I understand those who don't wear safety gear, because most of it is awkward, but I don't sympathize when that decision leads to injury.

-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"

Tim Douglass

[Doug Miller]

[snip lotsa real good stuff about safety gear]

I can't agree with you on this one. I also wear prescription glasses, and I've found the same difficulties with goggles that you described. For me, a face shield is the perfect solution: it never fogs, and it takes only seconds to put on. I wear mine constantly when I'm in the shop. The only downside I've seen to it is that you'd better remember to lift it when you feel a sneeze coming on. :-(

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

[Silvan]

I agree on goggles. Hate'em. The alternative, though, isn't foolproof. I had to pay a visit to my opthamologist after I scratched my cornea while weedeating wearing a pair of Weed Eater brand safety glasses with wrap-around side shields, wrap-around top shield and the whole nine yards. The bit of rock, twig, whatever, went up at an angle underneath, zipping past my nose.

It's a real conundrum. Goggles would have prevented that, but, as you say, they fog up with the slightest exertion. The little holes and vents and whatnot don't work worth a damn. Various anti-fog salves and balms help slightly, but they only buy you a few moments before you have to remove them and de-fog. They don't come anywhere near solving the problem.

Yup. Nothing really works. I feel like a dust mask actually forces me to inhale *more* dust, because it concentrates it at the interface between beard and mask. The alternative looks unwieldy, but more importantly, those hood things are frickin EXPENSIVE. It's a problem I wish I could solve, but it's kind of a question of weighing the risk of occasional dust inhalation against having SWMBO perpetually pissed off at me for shaving the beard. She *likes* the beard.

[Charlie Self]

[snip lotsa real good stuff about safety gear]

I can't agree with you on this one. I also wear prescription glasses, and I've found the same difficulties with goggles that you described. For me, a face shield is the perfect solution: it never fogs, and it takes only seconds to put on. I wear mine constantly when I'm in the shop. The only downside I've seen to it is that you'd better remember to lift it when you feel a sneeze coming on. :-(

I agree. When I used to be nearsighted, a face shield was about the only thing that kept fog off the eyeglasses for any length of time.

Now, I can wear just a pair of reader bifocals, and those are available all over the place these days. I have at least one pair I got at McFeely's. But you gotta change from nearsighted to mildly farsighted to do that, which in my case took cataract surgery.

[Ed Clarke]

Use a 3M AirMate. As you mention, it's very expensive ($800) but still quite a bit cheaper than a new set of lungs, or any surgery on your eyes. Mine has the full face shield, a hard hat and a positive pressure to keep dust and gas out of my lungs. I also have a beard which is NEVER EVER coming off.

I usually use a simple HEPA filter, but have a combo ammonia/HEPA unit for fuming with 30% ammonia. I had two episodes of asthma that left me unable to stand up for an hour after some exercise. Turned out to be acid reflux disease dumping acid into my lungs. $3/day worth of pills fixed that, but I retained the desire to keep crap out of my lungs/eyes and ears. Almost any protective gear is going to be cheaper than a visit to the hospital or medical specialist(s).

[Upscale]

I agree with you on this one. I wear glasses too and when necessary, it only takes a second to flip up the face shield when you need to. For the past dozen years, I've used one of the Lee Valley Tools face guards and so far have replaced the shield once after the original became scratched up too much. Better the shield than my face.

[Doug Miller]

My thoughts exactly. Many people forget that the face contains other things, besides the eyes, that are worth protecting. I don't like to think about catching a kickback in the teeth or the nose.

It's so quick and easy to put that face shield on, that I use it for all kinds of situations where eye protection doesn't really seem all that important (the benchtop mortiser, for instance). Why take the chance?

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?

[Tim Douglass]

I'm in that place with the beard. It's been there for 20 years and isn't going anywhere. I have been looking at various face shield setups with remote filtration. There is the AirMate and something else which is only about $350 IIRC. It has a belt pack with the filters etc. I sure could have used something the other day - I was fine sanding on maple and didn't realize how thick the dust was until I stopped. What really made me think was when I looked at the little electric heater in my workroom and saw that thick layer of dust all over the heating elements and stuff.

The cost thing is a big part of it for me. My annual tool budget won't run to *one* $800 purchase. If I were to buy an $800 AirMate I wouldn't have any reason to ever wear it because there would be no wood in the shop to make dust. So for now I wear the cheap dust masks (when I remember) and rely on the sweat and condensation on my beard to make a sort of filter around the edges.

-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"

Tim Douglass

[bridger]

funny... I've been using nail guns for something like 20 years and I've never shot myself in the eye.

not even once.

[OldNick]

On Fri, 04 Mar 2005 19:16:32 -0500, Roy Smith vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

remove ns from my header address to reply via email

Yeah. I got into a duscussion" with somebody on rec.boats.building about this. He was grizzling that no locals would work for him on his boat project, so he found some Mexicans who were willing to do the work. "Why are the local guys so lazy?"

He could not see that it was simply that the Mexicans were desperate, he was _still_ offering better than they got at home, and he was only going have to pay shit wages, with no safety training, because this _was_ after all "unskilled labour".

Or if he could see that, he thought it was OK.

[OldNick]

On Sun, 06 Mar 2005 14:14:24 -0700, [e-mail] vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

remove ns from my header address to reply via email

Yeah but that's just because you _shut_ yours and look away, every time you pull the trigger!