Shop Floor Safety — A Cause for Concern

“The current state of safety isn’t rosy right now,” he says. “I don’t want to paint a picture of doom and gloom, but many printers don’t realize that there’s been a sudden spike in fatalities associated with working on (printing) equipment.”

The examples are mounting. Margarita Mojica, 26 years old and four months pregnant, was killed in late January when she was apparently trapped by a diecutter at San Francisco-based Digital Pre-Press International (see full story on page 8). In the last two years, two workers were killed on stackers for web presses. Another person was pulled into and asphyxiated by a sheetfed press. In Maine, a female worker was decapitated when her pony tail got caught and wrapped around a web press’ drive shaft. Two other workers were killed in paper baler accidents.