My hands a wreaked from 35 + years in the construction industry using heavy breakers, grinders, saws etc all day every day for the first 20 years of my career. I have no feeling in my fingers on my right hand and limited feeling in my left, to an extent that I regularly cut and burn myself and only notice when I see the blood or blister. I have ben diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome and i am having tests for white finger.
In recent years this has become an issue on sites and we now do risk assessments on every tool and limit there use for example you can only use certain breaker for a set amout of time then you have to have a break for a set amount of time and you can only use it maybe 2 or 3 times a day. Obviously when these rules first came out it was a nightmare there were certain tools that we simply can't use on site, we used to use a small breaker powered by a compressor called a CP9 we used it mostly for breaking very hard material horizontally, without a doubt the most powerful breaker I have ever used. When we started risk assessing the maximum exposure time for this tool was something like 3 minutes and it could be used once in a shift! Obviously you no longer see CP9s on site. Tool companies soon caught up and now make tools that can be used with no real issues that can be used as part of a normal working day.
We looked at gloves and while it's some time since they were thought to be pretty useless and in some cases the caused further issues, apparently operatives squeeze the trigger too hard because they can't feel it.
I seldomly physically work on site any more (unfortunately) and even with the knowledge I have I still miss proper breakers.
In recent years this has become an issue on sites and we now do risk assessments on every tool and limit there use for example you can only use certain breaker for a set amout of time then you have to have a break for a set amount of time and you can only use it maybe 2 or 3 times a day. Obviously when these rules first came out it was a nightmare there were certain tools that we simply can't use on site, we used to use a small breaker powered by a compressor called a CP9 we used it mostly for breaking very hard material horizontally, without a doubt the most powerful breaker I have ever used. When we started risk assessing the maximum exposure time for this tool was something like 3 minutes and it could be used once in a shift! Obviously you no longer see CP9s on site. Tool companies soon caught up and now make tools that can be used with no real issues that can be used as part of a normal working day.
We looked at gloves and while it's some time since they were thought to be pretty useless and in some cases the caused further issues, apparently operatives squeeze the trigger too hard because they can't feel it.
I seldomly physically work on site any more (unfortunately) and even with the knowledge I have I still miss proper breakers.
