When the debate over table saw safety gets heated, numbers are brought out to bolster one side or the other. France Today published this headline the other day: CPSC wants stop daily table saw amputations. The second paragraph mentioned 10 amputations per day. This sounds serious. Maybe someone should take action. Or maybe we shouldlook at where these numbers come from, how they are used, and how they fit in the big picture of modern life.
These statistics are derived from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System. NEISS is a database used by the Consumer Product
Safety Commission to track injuries from products that range from abrasive cleaners and zip lines. For any safety issue, we as individuals and as a society need to do a cost/benefit analysis. We want to prevent anyone getting hurt. However, it is important to weigh the benefits and risks of using any product, as well as the costs and possible consequences of eliminating them. As individuals, we can eliminate risks entirely by choosing not to use something. Decisions at the individual level are more complex and challenging.
There are so many things we can be hurt by that it is difficult to even assess the risks. Rather than record every instance of every injury to every individual in the United States, the NEISS uses a small sample of cases from about 100 emergency rooms to project statistics to the population at large. Doctors in these ERs make notes and enter product, injury, body part and diagnostic codes and the results are weighted and projected. It functions in the same way as exit polls during elections. A small sample is taken and counted. Then, it’s applied to all of the population. Its a useful tool, but it isnt perfect and the numbers that come out at the far end are predictions, not facts.
Lets look at the table saw amputation numbers for 2009, the latest year with available statistics. If you want to follow along at home, the NEISS database is online, and the product code for table saws is 841. Table saws are mentioned in 783 samples. The database indicates that there have been 35,624 injuries. The accident is considered a tablesaw accident if the phrase table saw appears in any of the doctor’s notes or product codes. Although there aren’t many, the number includes instances when someone fell from a ladder, hit their head on a tablesaw, or hurt their back while moving a tablesaw.
If the word “amputation” is used, it will have the same effect. In 2009 for example, 117 reported cases were projected to arrive at an estimate of 4211 finger amputations. The actual notes reveal that four cases were not table saws and six were very close to amputations. This is only ten cases, but 10 out of 117 represents 8.5 percent. You can’t multiply the projected numbers, but it is safe to say that the total number is exaggerated.
Amputation is often followed by the phrase “life-altering” which was featured in France Today. While I don’t want to minimize any pain or suffering, analyzing injuries and potential solutions is by its nature a heartless, dollar-and-cents exercise. Mangle your hand at work, and your disability claim will be based on how many parts of how many fingers are gone. A thumb loss means you will lose your grip, which can make it more difficult to do everyday tasks. It can truly change your life.
Of the table saw amputation cases from 2009, about half involved the loss of one or more complete digits. The largest segment of that portion, 37 percent of the total amputations, were one finger or one thumb. The remaining listings had almost equal numbers of partial amputations or the loss a fingertip. 23 percent of cases that were classified as amputations involved the loss or partial amputation of one digit. Losing the tip of a pinky will hurt for a while, but unless youre a musician, it wont make much difference in your overall abilities or the quality of your life.
An estimating system like the NEISS assigns a confidence number that reflects the probability of the projected numbers being accurate. You could count every case in any given year to be certain of the numbers. A smaller sample means that the confidence number will reflect a higher degree of variation. There will be a point when the actual reports are too few to provide a reliable projection. When the sample is that small, the NEISS database wont make an estimate of overall cases. There are not enough samples available to project the total number of accidents in cases involving commercial woodworking operations, school saw operators, or saw operators younger than 18 years old.
This doesnt mean that cabinetmakers on the job or high school kids in shop class dont get injured. But it does mean that the number is quite small, compared to the total number of injuries. How does the table saw accident, especially amputations of fingers, fit into the larger picture of table saw users and society as a whole. It is not possible to count the number of table saws used in the United States. Estimates range between 6 million and 10 million. If we pick from the middle and use 8 million, the estimates suggest that in any particular year, about one table saw in 229 will be in an accident that sends someone to the emergency room, and that one in about 2,076 saws will result in an accident with an amputation as the result. About half of the accidents that result in complete loss of one or several digits are caused by sawing. That’s one in 4,152.
In the context of the general population of 310 million Americans, about one in 9,000 will go to the emergency room in any given year after tangling with their table saw, one in 80,000 will have a medical report that lists the word amputation and one in 160,000 will lose one or more fingers or a thumb. If you, or someone close to you are that one youll look at this differently than everyone else. For those charged with writing rules and regulations, the task will be to decide if this is a problem that happens often enough for action.
While looking at the numbers, I was curious about the table saw figures in relation to other items. There were approximately 22,000 finger amputations in America due to accidental injuries of all types in 2009. There is no doubt that table saws are a significant portion of that number. Although the data sample is not large enough to estimate the impact of many other items on the total number, there was an item that caused approximately the same amount of finger amputations and 10 times as many accidents. In addition, this product caused enough finger amputations among children under the age of 18 to generate an
estimate of total occurrences, about 45 percent of the total. This hazard causes finger amputations in five children every day. This is the
Name of the product The door.
Table saw injuries are a serious matter, and many if not most, could be prevented. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is looking at rules that could reduce the severity and number of these injuries. These rules would likely change the number and types of choices we have, and they would almost certainly raise the price of the tool that is central in most of our shops. Two big questions arise here: Are table saw injuries common enough to warrant government intervention and are there other options?
This article is one of several articles that will examine this topic in detail. Ill do my best to put my opinions, emotions and agendas on the shelf so as a group, woodworkers will have better information about the frequency, causes and possible solutions to table saw injuries. In upcoming posts Ill be reporting on the real costs of these injuries, the history of this issue from all sides, and most important what woodworkers tend to do to injure themselves and how they can prevent those injuries. Keep checking the RSS feed for these articles. You can also send me an email or leave comments.
