Our HSE Update October explores the focus area from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), as they continue to visit workplaces across the UK for spot checks and inspections. We also provide a roundup of prosecutions from the previous month, highlighting the commonly identified issues for employers to avoid.
Exposure to metalworking fluid
The HSE are inspecting manufacturing businesses that use metalworking fluids or coolants.
Focusing on how employers can ensure workers are protected from exposure to fluid or mist, generated by computer numerical control (CNC) machines and ensuring regular health checks are carried out.
The HSE have identified three areas where manufacturing companies can fall down on compliance:
- Not having local exhaust ventilation
- Not completing regular fluid quality checks
- Failing to provide regular health checks for lung and skin conditions.
Over £5m in fines and 4 workplace fatalities
The HSE issued over £5m in fines in September and reported 4 workplace fatalities. The highest fine was for £3m, issued to a waste management company after 2 employees were crushed in separate incidents. Both died from their injuries. The HSE found on each of these occasions, safe systems of work were not in place.
A quarrying company were fined £1.27m after a contractor was crushed when a feed hopper was not properly isolated before repair work commenced. The company failed to ensure critical defects were recorded and rectified in a timely manner. Sadly the contractor died from his injuries.
A manufacturing company were fined £200k for not providing adequate protection, resulting in 3 men receiving burns to their head, neck and face after an explosion due to wet scrap metal being added to a furnace.
In another case, a company were also fined £200k when one of their workers mistakenly stepped into a puddle of water when offloading his tanker. The puddle was actually a leak of Caustic, a corrosive chemical substance. The driver suffered severe chemical burns which required skin grafts to his feet and a toe being amputated from each foot.
A haulage company has been fined £100k after an employee fell 1.25 metres from a bay whilst preparing a load of trailers in his lorry. He suffered severe head injuries and later died in hospital. The HSE found that though a risk assessment had been carried out, it had not been followed through in practise.
Following these events in our HSE Update October, employers should ask themselves:
- Are all your risk assessments routinely reviewed?
- Are they still suitable?
- Are your employees up to date with all their training needs?
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