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Main causes of injury in the surface engineering industry

  • Manual handling[12] – eg through lifting/carrying heavy and/or awkward objects and account for 1/3 of all 3-day injuries.
  • Struck by – eg falling objects; moving vehicles. Manual handling assessment charts (the MAC tool)[13]
  • Slips and trips[14] - eg on uneven floors or due to poor housekeeping; failure to promptly clear up spillages
  • Contact with a harmful substance (which has also caused the greatest number of fatalities over the period)
  • Falls from height[15] – eg from ladder, elevated walkways.
  • Contact with moving machinery - eg movement of jig transporters

Over the past 6 years these causes have accounted for over 85% of all reported injuries.

Further information

Case studies of typical injuries and ill-health[16]

Link URLs in this page

  1. Surface engineeringhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/surfaceengineering/index.htm
  2. What is surface engineering? https://www.hse.gov.uk/surfaceengineering/what-is.htm
  3. Health and safety in surface engineeringhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/surfaceengineering/in-industry.htm
  4. Health topics in surface engineeringhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/surfaceengineering/health-topics.htm
  5. Safety topics in surface engineeringhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/surfaceengineering/safety-topics.htm
  6. Application of COMAHhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/surfaceengineering/comah.htm
  7. Overview - Resourceshttps://www.hse.gov.uk/surfaceengineering/resources.htm
  8. Publicationshttps://www.hse.gov.uk/surfaceengineering/information.htm
  9. Case studieshttps://www.hse.gov.uk/surfaceengineering/experience.htm
  10. Statisticshttps://www.hse.gov.uk/surfaceengineering/stats.htm
  11. Useful linkshttps://www.hse.gov.uk/surfaceengineering/links.htm
  12. Manual handlinghttps://www.hse.gov.uk/msd/index.htm
  13. Manual handling assessment charts (the MAC tool)https://www.hse.gov.uk/msd/mac/index.htm
  14. Slips and tripshttps://www.hse.gov.uk/slips/index.htm
  15. Falls from heighthttps://www.hse.gov.uk/work-at-height/index.htm
  16. Case studies of typical injuries and ill-healthhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/surfaceengineering/experience.htm
  17. First aidhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/firstaid/index.htm
  18. Manual handling Micrositehttps://www.hse.gov.uk/msd/index.htm
  19. Noisehttps://www.hse.gov.uk/noise/index.htm
  20. Vibrationhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/vibration/index.htm
  21. Report an accidenthttps://www.hse.gov.uk/riddor/index.htm

Glossary of abbreviations/acronyms on this page

COMAH
Control of Major Accident Hazards

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Updated: 2021-05-11