- THURSDAY, Aug. 14 (HealthDay News) — Safer triggers and training
have helped reduce nail gun injuries, but safety regulations are needed to
help protect residential carpenters, say Duke University Medical Center
researchers.

Nail guns cause more injuries than people realize, according to study
lead author Hester Lipscomb, a professor of occupational and environmental
medicine.

“There are more than 35,000 visits each year in the U.S. to emergency
departments for injuries from nail guns,” she said in a Duke news
release.

“Over the past three years, we have consistently found the sequential
trigger twice as safe as the more commonly used contact trip trigger,” she
said.

The contact trip trigger allows the nail gun to fire any time the nose
and trigger are both depressed, while the sequential trigger requires the
nose piece to be pressed down before the trigger is pulled.

“The contact trip trigger allows workers to rapidly fire the tool and
more frequently results in injuries from accidental discharges, double
fires and ricocheting nails,” Lipscomb said.

In this new study, she and her colleagues analyzed injuries among
apprentice carpenters in St. Louis and the surrounding area.

“We found that carpenters with more training were better equipped to
handle the tool and less prone to injury. Carpenters were best protected
when they received both classroom training and hands-on instruction.
Unfortunately, most residential carpenters, including immigrant workers,
are less likely to get training compared to the union workers we studied,”
Lipscomb said.

“There are currently no regulations that require the sequential trigger
be used or that define minimal training requirements, even though data
suggests there should be,” she noted.

The study was published in the American Journal of Industrial
Medicine.

More information

The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety has more about
nail guns.