The new ANSI nail gun standard: A lost opportunity for safety

Pneumatic nail guns have been shown in published studies to cause injury and death to both workers and consumers, but those equipped with sequential trigger mechanisms provide much greater safety protection against unintentional discharge than those equipped with contact triggers. In 2015 the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) approved a revision to its 2002 nail gun standard, but failed to require sequential triggers. Substantive and procedural deficiencies in the ANSI standard's development process resulted in a scientifically unsound nail gun safety standard, detracting from its use as the basis for a mandatory national safety standard and ultimately from its ability to protect worker and consumer users. Am. J. Ind. Med. 60:147-151, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.