America, Put. The Nailgun. Down.

by Jordan Yerman | April 13, 2007 at 08:35 am

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For most people, DIY magazines are like porn: you check them out and dig the pictures, but you'll never do anything in the magazine. However, some of us cannot resist having a go, and it looks like many of us should be reading the instructions first...

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has demanded that more be done to make DIYers aware of the dangers of nail guns following a massive rise in injuries provoked by the tools.

Indeed, the CDC says that since 1991, nail gun-inflicted injuries have risen by 200 per cent, averaging 37,000 victims a year between 2001-2005. However, "work-related nail gun injuries had stayed stable since 1998", Reuters notes, meaning that cack-handed amateurs were bearing the brunt.

A CDC report concluded: "This increase likely corresponds to an increase in availability during the 1990s of inexpensive pneumatic nail guns and air compressors in home hardware stores."

I'm all about DIY, and affecting your environment as a consumer: broken things should be fixed and not consigned to landfills. Having said that, please be careful when doing so! Superglue works on human skin, kinda, but it's best if you don't have to use it in the first place.

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