Badge Lanyard Safety

Machinery

Anything that accidentally gets into an industrial machine can get tangled and pulled farther in. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration gives understandable priority to the danger of accidental amputation of workers' limbs, but a badge on a lanyard can pose a similar risk. For instance, one page on OSHA's website graphically warns young people working in restaurants of what can happen if an apron is allowed to dangle from the neck of a worker using a mixer.

Because of their active lives, children are especially likely to get lanyards tangled dangerously in machines or play equipment. In October 2007, Dunkin' Donuts LLC recalled --- and registered the recall with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission --- about 1 million lanyards that had been distributed in a nationwide Halloween giveaway. The reasons for the recall included a choking hazard from the glow stick that hung on the lanyard and the strangulation hazard posed by the lanyard itself.

A lanyard around the neck may seem a good way for medical personnel to keep their IDs accessible to patients and coworkers. In addition to the risk to themselves of getting the badge caught in a bed mechanism or other machinery, these caregivers should consider the kind of lanyard they use. The soft fabric of a shoelace-type lanyard might absorb infectious material from one patient and deposit it on another patient's bedding or other materials. A beaded lanyard --- whether handcrafted or using simple ball chain --- also contains many small spaces where such materials can lodge. Medical workers may opt instead to display their IDs on cables that retract into small reels the workers can pin to their uniforms.

Some settings involve regular risks that are heightened by the possibility of a badge lanyard being used as a weapon to control the wearer. Prisons and jails may require workers and inmates to use only lanyards that incorporate rubber fittings, plastic snaps or hook-and-loop fasteners in as many as three places along their length. If such a lanyard is grabbed, it breaks off in the hands of the offender. Someone caring for those with psychiatric or neurological disabilities may face similar risks, though not through criminal intent on the part of a patient.