Cumbria Crystal fined £15,000 for loss of finger

Lead crystal manufacturer Cumbria Crystal was fined £15,000 after an employee suffered a serious hand injury while using machinery.
The circumstances were:

• Cumbria Crystal have a pillar drill which can be used for reaming the neck of a glass bottle.
• No risk assessment had been carried out.
• As a consequence, no reasonably practical control measures were in place.
• There were no control measures to prevent accessing dangerous parts of the machine.
• On 20 February 2015, Laura Ponsford was using the drill to widen (or ream) the neck of a glass bottle. 
• The chuck and reamer were unguarded.  
• Mrs Ponsford was wearing latex gloves while performing this task.
• The glove on her right hand became entangled within the rotating parts of the reamer resulting in the middle finger of her hand being severed.
• She underwent 10 hours of surgery to reattach the finger but unfortunately she was later told the operation had not been successful and had to undergo a further operation in March 2015 to have the finger surgically amputated to below the second knuckle.

The HSE inspector said:
“This incident could have been prevented simply by providing guarding to prevent access to dangerous parts of the machine. The need to guard dangerous parts of machinery is well known with established industry guidance available, and in this case, the result of that guidance being ignored is a serious injury to a young woman.”

Severfield fined £191,000 after death of forklift truck driver

Severfield (UK) Limited, a large steel fabrication company, was fined £191,000 (inc.costs) after a forklift truck operator was killed when the truck he was operating overturned. 
The offence was not a significant cause of the fatal accident.

The circumstances were:

• Severfield failed to manage forklift truck driving operations. 
• They did not enforce the wearing of seat-belts or control the speed at which some FLT operators drove their trucks.
• Kelvin McGibbon was reversing the forklift truck on 13 March 2013.
• He was not wearing a seatbelt.
• The forklift truck struck some steps causing it to overturn.
• Mr McGibbon suffered crush injuries which proved fatal. 

The HSE inspector said:
“A company has a legal duty for the health and safety of people working on its site, whether they are employees or not. They are required to assess risks, eliminate them where possible and enforce proper control measures, such as seat belt wear, by checking that safe driving practices are being followed to deal with the risks that remain. Sadly, in this case, the prosecution shows that the company’s management of FLT driving operations and risk control measures failed which exposed employees to danger.”

Ebbw Vale vehicle seat manufacturing company fined £52,010 after ignition of release agent

Sears Manufacturing Company (Europe) Limited, an  Ebbw Vale vehicle seat manufacturing company, was fined £52,010 (inc. costs) after a worker was injured from an explosion.

The circumstances were:

• Highly flammable release agent is used to prevent dispensed foam sticking to the seat mould.
• The Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres Regulations 2002 (DSEAR) require an assessment to have been carried out and suitable control measures put in place to prevent an explosion.
• A failure to have suitable control measures in place caused the release agent to ignite on 26 January 2015.
• An operator suffered burns to his head and hands.

Pseudo Emergency stop

I found this on 5 machines today.

Looks like an emergency stop because it is a yellow box with a red mushroom headed button.
But the button doesn't move when you press it because it's not an emergency stop.

Slide the button to one side and it allows the lid to hinge up to expose the start and stop controls.

In this picture there are 3 yellow boxes with red mushroom head buttons. In an emergency, I'd go for the top one, but that's the spurious one.

There are two problems with this device:

1. People recognise red mushroom buttons on a yellow background as emergency stops and therefore will go for this device in an emergency; I know I would.
2. The practice of hiding the real stop button behind the cover is an impediment to stopping the machine, whether in an emergency or not.

What we're doing is to cut off the hinged lid so you end up with the stop and start buttons in a yellow box.

Note that these machines are from a British company, not a company in a distant country who may be unaware of harmonised European standards.

3 companies fined a total of £77,000 after incidents because of poor H&S consultancy

An employer and two safety consultancies were fined after 2 incidents at the Haverhill site of Jan Cavelle Furniture Company.

The circumstances were:

• In 2013, Jan Cavelle Furniture Company commissioned Worksafe Training & Consultancy Ltd., to review all risk assessments and work procedures and to provide updated risk assessments and procedures where required.
• Worksafe Training & Consultancy sub-contracted this work to Tony Baker of Leading Health & Safety Consultants Ltd., who provided risk assessments and recommendations relevant to both the biscuit cutter and the overhead router. 
• The risk assessments and procedures provided by Mr Baker were neither suitable nor sufficient to control risks arising from the operation of these two machines.
• An employee of the company sustained serious injuries when operating a biscuit cutter and the rotating blade made contact with his hand, cutting his thumb to the bone.
• Also, an employee sustained injury to his hand whilst using the cutter of an overhead router and received serious lacerations and crush injuries to his right index finger.
• Both incidents occurred due to the operators adopting unsafe working practices. This was due to a lack of training, inadequate supervision and insufficient and unsuitable risk assessments.

Jan Cavelle Furniture Company was fined £22,000 (inc.costs).

Workplace Training and Consultancy was fined £45,000 (inc.costs).

Health and Safety Consultants was fined £10,000 (inc.costs).

Legal requirement to remove IPPC mark on reused timber

For those of you who like to make bird boxes and the like from broken pallets, did you know that you have to remove the IPPC mark before it's reused?

The mark signifies that the item has undergone treatment (in this case, heat treatment) to kill off organisms that can affect trees. 

Poor economics when ignoring improvement and prohibition notices

We reported in February about William Fry Fabrications Limited being fined £15,860 (inc.costs) for failure to comply with improvement and prohibition notices regarding the lack of inspection of 2 cranes. 
A report in the April addition of IOSH magazine gives some more information and shows what poor economic sense the practice at William Fry Fabrications made.
They claimed that they could not find an engineer to carry out the inspection. However, during the court appearance, the HSE Inspector stated that he easily found 3, ranging in costs from £375 to £650 + VAT.
The £15,860 figure was just the fine and court costs, and the HSE's Fees For Intervention could quite easily have doubled this.
So for the sake of saving a maximum of £650, the company lost £30,000. 
The lesson to be learnt is to not make silly savings when it comes to health and safety. Fortunately in this case, nobody was hurt.