Hazards of Using Filing Cabinets

Despite the increased use of computers in the workplace, many businesses must still use filing cabinets to organize paper documents. Due to their size and weight, filing cabinets pose a potential danger to office workers. Employees can avoid injury by recognizing the inherent hazards of filing cabinets.

Weight Distribution

• Large quantities of paper are heavy; be careful to distribute weight evenly inside a filing cabinet. When filling a filing cabinet for the first time, do not fill the top drawers first, as this can cause the filing cabinet to become unstable or tip over. Placing too much weight in any single drawer within a filing cabinet causes damage to the drawers; the uneven weight can bend the drawer or the rails it rides on. Verify the net weight the cabinet can safely handle with the manufacturer.

Drawers

• When you open more than one filing cabinet drawer at a time, you risk tipping over the entire cabinet. Each time you pull a drawer out, especially a very heavy one, the weight in the cabinet shifts forward, causing the filing cabinet to become slightly unstable. The more drawers you pull out at a time, the more unstable the cabinet becomes. You can also hit your head on the drawers by leaving top drawers open as you access bottom drawers. Leaving drawers open for long periods of time can cause the filing cabinet to tip over. Additionally, coworkers can stumble over opened drawers, causing painful injuries. When closing file cabinet drawers, you can accidentally slam the drawer on your fingers if you do not use the drawer’s handle.

Top Storage

• In some offices, people place boxes of paper or other objects on top of filing cabinets. These objects can make the filing cabinet unbalanced and prone to tipping over. While opening and closing the drawers, you can jostle the objects on top of the cabinet, causing them to fall over onto you or anyone else near the filing cabinet.