DURHAM, N.C. According to new statistics that would make Bob Vila cringe, the number of injuries from nail guns has almost doubled since 2001. And researchers say that more and more it is do-it-yourselfers who are feeling the pain.
In fact, the number of weekend carpenters treated each year for nail gun injuries in emergency rooms in U.S. hospitals more than tripled between 1991 and 2005, increasing to about 14,800 per year, according to an analysis by researchers at Duke University Medical Center and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Nail guns typically use compressed air to drive nails into wood. First used by construction workers and professional carpenters, the guns now are sold routinely in hardware stores and home improvement centers.
The Duke researchers said that many injuries caused by nail guns could be prevented by using tools that fire only when the nose piece is depressed before the trigger is pulled. This sequential trigger mechanism is designed to prevent rapid, unintentional firing, but it has not been used as much as tools that allow the user to rapidly bounce fire nails.
The findings appear in the April 13, 2007, issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, published by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
These kinds of injuries are often seen as bizarre accidents, but they actually occur fairly frequently and we know quite a bit about factors that contribute to them, said Hester Lipscomb, Ph.D., an associate professor of occupational and environmental medicine and author of the new report. She has long studied nail gun injuries among construction workers, but she says this is the first such analysis of injuries among consumers.
"The increases in injuries are likely related to availability of these tools on the consumer market and the steady decline in the costs of tools and air compressors," Lipscomb said. "The frequency of such inju
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Contact: Richard Merritt
Merri006@mc.duke.edu
919-684-4148
Duke University Medical Center
13-Apr-2007