Wood cutting accidents: interactive infographic

[CarbonNeutral]

As part of the work in my consulting company, I recently came across data that showed a year's worth of data from 100 emergency rooms across the US. It contains every incident where a consumer product was involved. Chain saws, axes, and log splitters are included. I took these products, and also added any accidents where "tree" or "fire wood" appeared in the accident description. I than ran through the data pulling out any rows that didn't belong there. Obviously, only log splitters could be considered accidents solely involved with wood burning, but all involve dealing with wood and trees.

This link will take you to the graphic (it can take a few seconds to load). The top chart shows every single incident that occurred, plotted against age, type of injury, and the bars colored by body part. If you hover your mouse over a single bar, a tooltip will pop up that contains the accident description. The filter at the top right allows you to select just accidents involving log splitters, or chainsaws, or everything. You can also highlight a body part, and it will grey out all the other body parts. If you look at the data with everything selected, you can see for example, that lacerations are the most common injury (number of bars in this column), or that amputation involves only fingers (thankfully, I suppose)

The chart on the bottom right shows the same data, but individual cases are not shown - the size of the box reflects the number of cases involving that body part/injury type.

The chart on the right shows the time of year - you can see the peak in October for log splitter injuries if you choose this on the filter.

Why did I do this? Two reasons - I like dealing with data like this.., but secondly I have found this data instructive - especially when reading some of the accident descriptions - it's made me think more about PPE, what perhaps I shouldn't do, what to really look out for, and so on. I hope you do too. I know the timing isn't great with Goose's accident - my best wishes to him, but it wasn't his misfortune that prompted this. I've included a screen grab of the data below.

 

[Dakotas Dad]

Goose's accident not withstanding, plenty of good info there, and I like the filters. Looks like a 50 year old is kind of in a sweet spot injury wise..lol. guess that must be the point where you are still paying attention, wear your PPE, and being careful. Hate to admit, morbid curiosity has me reading some of the reports.. and really? at least some of these people are running on borrowed time.. "struck in eye by pipe that patient was cutting with an axe"... I've cut some pipe, never even thought to try an axe...

 

[CarbonNeutral]

You should see the full dataset - oh man (and woman)....

But, yes, there's an element of curiosity, but hopefully those will make you think twice before hitting the go switch..

 

[Danno77]

any data there on death related injuries? Not trying to be morbid or anything, but I didn't see anything showing deaths from chainsaw useage. I know that can't be right!

 

[CarbonNeutral]

Well, only 100 hospitals participate, so there's a good chance that none of them saw a fatality. Equally, I would suspect that not all fatalities end up in the ER, or at least, there's less inclination to get round to coding it..

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Interesting data.

 

[CarbonNeutral]

Okay, couldn't resist this one:

"PATIENT INJURED HIS THUMB WHILE USING A CHAIN SAW TO MAKE SOME THINGS FOR HIS MOTHER'S HOUSE, USED COCAINE & MARIJ. DX-NEAR AMPUTATION-THUMB"


Bad idea, just in case you were wondering

 

[Danno77]

narrow the injury down to the saw, then look at the burns. Interesting stuff. Exploding chainsaws and leaky gas being ignited with cigarettes (and more)

also, couldn't help but chuckle at the number of "axe" related foot injuries. I was waiting patiently for someone to blame all of those on fiskars.....

 

[wolfram]

I wonder about relative rates. Man hours per wood-heat accident vs. other avocations. Still, the chart makes you take notice. Thank you.

 

[CarbonNeutral]

Yep, risk is always a goal - you could normalize it against number sold per year, maybe, total market size, etc.

 

[smokinj]

One thing for sure you never know what might happen...I am still very jumpy when felling trees after its on he ground it takes me 10-15 min to calm back down to some what normal. The more you do the bigger risk you have.

 

[Lumberjacks Wife]

I asked my DH for a woman's chainsaw for my birthday next week. After reading this, I think I've changed my mind.

 

[CarbonNeutral]

Well, make sure you read the manual, understand the risks, wear proper PPE. By being here (and maybe having looked at this data), you're already ahead of many.

 

[smokinj]

I asked my DH for a woman's chainsaw for my birthday next week. After reading this, I think I've changed my mind.

You wear the right gear and NOT felling any trees its mostly commonsense! do a search on PPE

 

[Dakotas Dad]

^^^Like they said ^^^

I asked my DH for a woman's chainsaw for my birthday next week. After reading this, I think I've changed my mind.

wear your gear, use your head. you will be fine. don't ever start a cut with "hey y'all watch this"...or.. "hold my beer a minute.."

millions of chainsaws out there never even get close to tasting human blood. It is well known they must be put down once they do..

BTW, what is your criteria for a "woman's chainsaw". My wife just sort of inherited my small husky when I got the bigger one. Never thought of it as a woman's chainsaw.. she seems comfortable with it, but maybe there is a better choice?

 

[firefighterjake]

I asked my DH for a woman's chainsaw for my birthday next week. After reading this, I think I've changed my mind.

Wear the proper equipment . . . learn how to properly and safely operate the saw . . . and you should be OK. Heck, one could get seriously injured with a paring knife . . . a lot depends on learning how to safely operate the equipment -- whether it be a paring knife, circular saw, chain saw or even a bicycle.

For the record, my sister has her own chainsaw . . . a smaller one . . . my brother-in-law cuts the trees down and she limbs them . . . she says it beats using the handsaw that he first gave her to cut off the limbs.