Arm crushed in machine at powder coating company

An employee of a powder coatings company had his arm seriously injured in machinery.
The circumstances were:

• The company was Thermaset Ltd who manufacture and supply powder coating paint from a site in Tamworth. 
• A hot, thick product is passed through an extruder machine, flattened by rollers and allowed to harden along a conveyor. It is then broken up into small pieces and granulated to a powder.
• The employee was asked to clear product that had got stuck on the machine’s rollers.
• A hand-held scraper he was given failed to remove it, so he reached into the machine to grab it with his hands. However, because the product was hot and wet, it stuck to his glove and his arm was dragged into the rollers.
• The employee suffered severe crush injuries and required intensive physiotherapy.

The HSE found that:

• Blockages on the extruder machines were a regular occurrence
• There was no documented safe system of work for operatives to follow when clearing them.
• Although workers were given a small hand-held scraper to free product from the rollers, different operatives each had a preferred method of clearing a blockage.
• The employee had started work in the extruder shop six months before the incident happened. 
• He was placed with an experienced member of staff to shadow and learn the process, but did not receive any formal information, instruction or training.

The HSE prosecuted Thermaset Ltd, who were fined £19,827 (inc. costs) . The HSE inspector said, "It was not unusual for product to get stuck in the rollers and Thermaset Ltd should have had a written procedure in place for dealing with these occurences. There was a basic risk assessment for the extruders, but none of the employees had seen it." 

 Source: HSE  HSE/M/102/13  17 April 2013

Short-term hearing loss is body's way of protecting itself

Short-term hearing loss after a loud rock concert might not be all bad, according to research showing this is the body's way of protecting itself.
Professor Gary Housley's research debunks a number of myths, including the idea that temporary hearing loss after a rock concert indicates damage.
"It may explain why we lose our hearing for hours or days after we have been exposed to a rock concert or listen to music at high levels using our personal music players," says the University of NSW professor whose paper is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).
Prof Housley cautions that continued loud noise can lead to irreversible damage through the loss of high-frequency hearing.
"Our research shows that the ear can adapt to high noise levels and keep operating. But there is a catch - because our hearing adjusts, we think the sound has a lower volume than it actually has and we can easily exceed the capacity of the ear."
He says safe workplace legislation specifies the upper limit of noise exposure is 85 decibels for eight hours a day and 97 decibels for 30 minutes, as sound intensity doubles every three decibels.
The sound in a typical nightclub can be 95 to 105 decibels.
"Other research shows people are regularly listening to personal music devices in excess of 100 decibels."
There are no restrictions on noise levels from personal music devices in Australia, but in the European Union they are pre-set at 85 decibels.
Prof Housley and researchers from New Zealand and the US found that as sound levels rise, the cells in the cochlea release a hormone which causes a temporary reduction in hearing sensitivity.
His team found that reversible hearing loss is a physiological adaptation mechanism.
Now the team are hoping to find ways to better protect the ear against noise in loud environments.

Phil Chambers note:
The limits above apply to Australia.
The work does agree with the concern that SSS have always had that we face a major problem in decades to come as people who are now young and whose hearing is being impaired by loud earphones have the added loss of hearing that is related to age.

Source: The Australian 16th April 2013

Safety devices deliberately disabled

A recycling firm has been fined for putting workers’ lives at risk after two machines at their Durham site were found to have vital safety mechanisms deliberately disabled.
During a spot investigation, the HSE found there had been deliberate bypassing and disrepair of several machine guards on two baling machines, which were used to compress material such as cardboard and cans for recycling. 

The HSE found:

• 8 serious faults on the two machines, including the deliberate bypassing of key control systems to allow access to the compaction chambers, 
• Damage to one of the emergency stops on a feed conveyor.

The HSE:

• Issued Prohibition Notices were served stopping all work on the two machines. 
• Issued an Improvement Notice requiring implementation of a routine guard checking procedure to ensure interlocks and emergency stops were working correctly.
• Prosecuted the company 

Foreman Recycling Limited, of Edmonton, London, was fined a total of £32,000 (inc. costs) after pleading guilty to two breaches of Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.
HSE inspector Victoria Wise said:
“The dangers associated with operating baling machines are well-known in the waste and recycling industry, as is the history of serious and fatal injuries resulting from their use. These are tremendously powerful machines with a number of mechanical moving parts that have the potential to cause serious harm. Appropriate safeguarding of these machines is extremely important and should include all operations including blockage clearance. The two baling machines inspected at Foreman Recycling Limited were found to have a significant number of fundamental safety features disabled, a situation the company’s management was aware of. The standards found at the site were unacceptable. Fortunately no-one was injured by the machines, but this prosecution should act as a wake up call to companies who do not have a robust safety management system or who put profit before safety.”

Roofing company employee falls through skylight

A self-employed roofer has been fined after an employee suffered major injuries falling through a skylight at a Nuneaton industrial estate.
A Sutton Coldfield man was re-cladding the asbestos roof of premises at the Centrovell Industrial Estate, on Caldwell Road, on 17 July 2010 when he fell seven metres to the factory floor below. He fractured his pelvis, back and foot and was unable to work for several months.
The facts were:

1. Self-employed roofer John O’Brien was responsible for the work
2. He failed to do enough to prevent or mitigate the fall.
3. Some steps had been taken to protect workers on the roof but there was no protection in place on the skylight the worker fell through, which was known to be fragile.

Mr O’Brien, 42, of Newmarket Road, Norton Canes, Cannock, was fined £2,000 (inc. costs) for a breach of the Work at Height Regulations 2005.

HSE inspector Mhairi Lockwood said:
"Normally you would expect netting to be put up under the roof that was being worked on in order to catch a falling person before they hit the ground. This situation was unusual though, as the building had a lot of ducting, so another system was put in place, using metallic mesh. However, at the time, there was no covering over the fragile roof lights, meaning the injured person suffered the serious injuries he did. Work at height is a high-risk activity which requires thorough planning and execution. The system of work adopted should be clear and unambiguous, involving detailed sequencing of how the work was going to be carried out and the control measures that need to be in place."

Forklift truck accident results in amputation

A London-based chemicals company has been prosecuted after a an employee was run over by a forklift truck and had to have part of his leg amputated.
The employee was hit as he carried out maintenance on a drain cover at Nuplex Resins Ltd in North Woolwich Road, Newham, on 3 August 2011. He suffered major crush injuries to his right leg and had to undergo an above-the-knee amputation in hospital. He also sustained ligament damage to his left leg, a dislocated left elbow and was in hospital for some four weeks. He has been unable to return to work at Nuplex since.

The facts of the case were:

1. The forklift truck driver, who was carrying a one-tonne palletised load, was unable to see the injured worker, a laboratory technician, who was sealing a drain cover on a roadway at the site.
2. There were no barriers or tape indicating the area had to be avoided, although there were fixed signs in place banning pedestrians.
3. Nuplex Resins Ltd had failed to carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment for carrying out maintenance activity in the road.
4. The company had further failed to put measures in place to adequately protect employees working in the road from the risk of being hit by forklift trucks.
5. The truck hit the employee as it travelled on a main forklift route between the production and warehouse sites - a route that was used up to 100 times per day by each operative.

On 27th March 3103 Nuplex Resins Ltd was fined a total of £23.139 (inc.costs) after pleading guilty to single breaches of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.
HSE Inspector Stephen Farthing said:
"The serious injuries the worker sustained could have been avoided. It would have been relatively easy for Nuplex Resins to close the road down for the 15-minute period that was needed to seal the drain cover. The company needed only to follow readily available guidance and put adequate precautions in place to separate operational traffic from employees carrying out maintenance in the roadway. Every year there are more than 60 deaths from work-related transport accidents and over 2,000 major injuries. Employers must ensure that they assess the movement of vehicles and where possible segregate pedestrians to eliminate the risk."

Source: HSE LSE/69/13

Diseases to be retained in RIDDOR

The HSE had originally proposed that disease reporting be dropped, but this resulted in many objections. The proposal now is that:

1. Disease reporting is restricted to the 6 diseases listed below (under background data).
2. To avoid the complexity and ambiguity associated with current reporting requirements, the existing complex schedule of diseases mapped against specific occupations would be replaced by simpler, more general reporting requirements to capture all of those situations where a person’s work has caused their illness:
   eg. any new diagnosis of asthma, where the person’s work involves significant or regular exposure to a known respiratory sensitiser.
    

Strategic Safety Systems welcomes this proposal (Proposal B in the HSE paper.)

The revised requirements would address the majority of concerns raised in relation to the loss of valuable regulatory data, and the reduction of the existing complex and lengthy schedule  would ease the capture of ill health data relating to existing, novel or altered processes.
.

Background data

Under current RIDDOR reporting requirements, ill health and occupational diseases represent a very small proportion (less than 2%) of all reports received. Annually, approximately 1,800 disease reports are received, compared with over 111,000 non-fatal injury reports.

Whilst there are currently 47 distinct reportable diseases, 90% of the ill health reports received are accounted for by 6 conditions: 

• Hand Arm Vibration Syndrome (46% of all reports)
• Carpal tunnel syndrome, 
• Dermatitis, 
• Severe cramp of the arm, 
• Tendonitis, and 
• Occupational asthma. 

Around one third of all disease reports are submitted by approximately 100 organisations.

The list of diseases occupies 13 pages (62 to 74) of the present guidance on RIDDOR.

Whilst there is a lot of statistical data on injuries available from the HSE there is, understandably, little on diseases.   

See the HSE's proposal paper.

ISO Accreditation and non-accreditation

 A lot of people get confused about accreditation and certification. These are different processes and a company cannot be "accredited to ISO 9001", etc.  An article by UKAS in the April/May edition of the FSB's Business Network magazine was lacking in clarity, so that hasn't helped much. The diagram below shows what the terms actually mean.

So, you become certified to ISO 9001 and the company that certifies you is accredited by UKAS1 for that, and normally other, standards.

Now, you can become certified to ISO 9001 by a non-accredited body, and this at first seems attractive because the costs are normally lower.  There is no legal impediment to stop a company calling themselves a certification body and printing certificates, but such certification is of dubious value.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) recently published a statement which encouraged UK businesses, local authorities to use only accredited bodies. It also stated that any organisation falsely suggesting it is accredited should be reported to Trading Standards.

I'm not a great fan of UKAS, and I believe that the inflexible approach they take drives companies away from accredited bodies, but you must be aware that certifcation by a non-accredited body may be regarded by potential or actual clients as being worthless, not a situation you want to be in when tendering for work. 

There was also an article about a meeting to be held in the USA where the speaker is an
unaccredited ISO 9001 Registrar who thinks accreditation is antisemitic.  One person did some research into this person and found that "he is claiming to have experience in 'medical implants' and is offering unaccredited ISO 13485 certifications for medical device companies. If the FDA isn't paying attention, someone could literally get killed.”

Strategic Safety Systems provide systems for ISO 9001, ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001, ISO 13485, ISO 27001, FSC, PEFC and other standards and have over 170 certifications to date.

See our certification successes.

1 or any National Accreditation Body in another country.