How do you get white knuckle disease?

Answer 1

This is secondary form of Raynaud's disease, from the continuous use of vibrating hand-held machinery.

You get white knuckles from the damage to the blood vessels in your hands. You can also develop numbness in your fingers (nerve damage) and loss of manual dexterity(muscle damage).

This is a cumulative disease and does not happen overnight. You need to regulate your "trigger time", the amount of time you operate using handheld devices. Regardless if you use small vibrating tools for long periods of time vs heavily vibrating tools for short periods of time (like a chainsaw) you still receive the same affect.

If the usage continues for months to years the damage could be permanent. Symptoms will first appear during usage then disappear over time. If you do not address the situation you could lose your fingers to amputation.

• The correct name for this condition is vibration white finger syndrome or VWF. Minor conditions affect the finger tips - but more severe VWF can cause the whole finger to the knuckle to turn white. It is usually caused by continuous exposure to vibrating power tools in the workplace. To see more about vibration white finger including how to recover compensation from an employer in the UK see the related link entitled "miners VWF".