Hand Safety & Gloves Toolbox Talk

Project: ____________ · Date: ____________ · Led by: ____________

Hands are involved in almost everything we do — and they're the most injured part of the body in construction, sending around a million workers a year to the ER. Ask anyone who's lost a fingertip: it happened in under a second, doing something they'd done a hundred times.

Why it matters

Your hands are always at the point of work — nearest the blade, the pinch, the load. Gloves cut injury risk dramatically, but the bigger habit is line-of-fire thinking: noticing where the energy goes before your hand is in its path.

Key points — cover all of these

1. Before each task, ask: where does my hand NOT belong? Under the load, past the guard, inside the pinch — find it, then keep out.
2. Match the glove to the task: cut-resistant for blades and sheet metal, impact gloves for demo and rigging, chemical-resistant for concrete and epoxy. A leather glove is not all-purpose.
3. Pinch points own more fingers than blades do: hitches, rebar, pipe joints, closing gates, load-to-wall gaps. Use tag lines and push sticks, not fingers.
4. Never pull toward yourself with a blade, and never put your free hand in front of the cut path.
5. No gloves near rotating equipment — drill presses, lathes, some grinders — where the glove itself gets caught and drags the hand in.
6. Jewelry off. A ring caught on a bolt or form edge will degloves a finger in one motion.

Ask the crew

The answers are the point — this is where today's real hazards surface.

• What's the worst hand near-miss anyone here has seen — and what was the hand doing there?
• Do we actually have the right glove types on site for today's tasks, or is everyone in the same pair?
• Which task today has the nastiest pinch point, and how do we keep hands out of it?

The one thing today

Before you grab, lift, or cut today, take one second to ask: where does the energy go if this slips?

Reference: OSHA 29 CFR 1910.138 / 1926.95 (hand protection)

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