Whenever a worker who is not wearing hand protection suffers a hand injury, the question comes up: whose responsibility is hand protection anyway? The employer? The worker? The safety officer?
Protecting workers’ hands from accidental injury is not a trivial matter for U.S. employers. Every year there are more than a million emergency room visits due to hand injuries. OSHA standards 1910.138(a), General requirements and 1910.138(b), Selection clearly require employers to provide hand protection.