Not at all in the same vein as DIY mum, we had a couple of industrial safety
stories at work this week which I think are worth repeating.

The first was a fireman who had hydraulic fluid injected into his hand
(through hide gloves) from a pinhole in a hose when training on one of those
cutters for taking the roof off cars. He didn't get prompt, or good initial
medical treatment, needed radical surgery to save the arm and more or less
lost the use of the hand. Worth remembering for those of us with tractors or
diggers.

The second was a double fatality of welders on a petrochemical plant. An
argon cylinder had been left leaking into the vessel they were due to work
on. The first one went in and collapsed; the second, instead of raising the
alarm first, went in after him, and they both died. You hear of double
fatalities far too often, from drowning, electrocution, and fire as well as
asphyxiation. In my industry we are all trained to use the acronym "STAR",
meaning Stop, Think, Act, Review.

(The Act, Review bit means that, say, if you have operated a valve, you
check that the noises or pipe temperatures change the way you were expecting
them to. This helps avoid the accident where you isolate the wrong circuit,
and then end up working on a live one).

Apologies to those who are already familiar with these.