HSE withdraws lead safety advice

As reported in the Risks Newsletter 432…

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has withdrawn advice on the dangers of working with lead after an investigation found it greatly under-estimated health risks that could be affecting over 100,000 workers. The HSE move came after a report by academics at Stirling University said the official health and safety warnings about the dangers of lead were so complacent the watchdog was guilty of ‘extreme recklessness’ with workers’ health. The current UK maximum exposure limit for males is set at 60 microgrammes of lead in 100ml (µg/100ml) of blood, at which level workers must be suspended until their blood lead level falls. But the Stirling University report, ‘Dangerous lead’, points to substantial scientific evidence that much lower levels – as little as 10 to 20 (µg/100ml), a fraction the current UK standard – can cause chronic, long-term ill health. ‘Lead and you’, HSE’s main guidance for workers on the issue, takes a different line. It says: ‘Serious ill-health problems rarely occur unless people have at least 100 microgrammes of lead per decilitre of blood.’ After publication last week of the Stirling report, which was also featured on Channel 4 News and in The Guardian, HSE admitted the leaflet is misleading and has since removed it from the HSE website. However, despite a series of recommendations from HSE expert committees that the lead standard should be reviewed in the light of evidence of risks significantly below the currently permitted exposure levels, HSE maintains it has ‘no intention’ of doing anything about it, the Stirling report says. HSE’s attitude was described as ‘blinkered’ and ‘wrong’ by Professor Andrew Watterson, whose University of Stirling department analysed the data. ‘HSE medical staff identified evidence of the health threats which existed to a significant number of workers several years ago,’ he said. ‘Yet remarkably HSE policy still remains unchanged.’

• Dangerous lead, Hazards magazine, October-December 2009. Channel 4 News report and video clip. The Guardian. HSE statement. Green jobs blog.

 

A dead rabbit gets swifter, better justice

I couldn’t let this one slip by without re-printing it here. (Thanks to Rory O’Neill, editor of Hazards magazine, for permission to use such articles from Risks, the TUC’s weekly online bulletin for safety reps and others.)

Safety campaigners have reacted furiously after the death of a rabbit was treated more seriously by the courts than the death of a construction worker. Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK), which speaks for the bereaved relatives of workplace fatality victims, was speaking out after Discovery Homes (Scotland) Ltd was fined £5,000 and the firm’s director Richard Pratt £4,000 on 8 June after the death of employee Andrezej Freitag. On the same day Steven Appleton was jailed for causing unnecessary suffering to a rabbit at Magistrates Court in Caerphilly after he stamped it to death. He received a six month custodial sentence. FACK member Sharon Norman, whose father Gordon Field was crushed to death at work, has written to prime minister Gordon Brown to protest. She said: ‘When I read the two news reports and the outrageously different penalties handed down by our courts to the killer of a rabbit and the killers of a man, I was so angry and I had to email the prime minister. I asked him to explain to me how this could be right.’ She added: ‘Every year many more people are given custodial and suspended sentences for animal cruelty than have ever been given such sentences for killing a worker. We don’t condone animal cruelty but cruelty to people that devastates families must surely be more serious?’ She added it took three years after her dad was killed at work for his negligent employer to be fined, ‘yet the rabbit killer was tried, convicted and sentenced in a few months.’

• FACK news release and website. The death at work of Gordon Field, Sharon Norman’s father [pdf]. Contract Journal. BBC News Online

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HSE chair wants more safety reps

The benefits of trade union safety reps are beyond all doubt, the chair of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has said. Judith Hackitt told the worker involvement conference of TUC’s Southern and Eastern Region (SERTUC) last week: ‘Throughout my working life it has always been the case that the workforce has been fully involved in health and safety and the importance of safety representatives has never been questioned – because it’s never been in any doubt.’ She added: ‘In some ways, I am surprised that we continue to have to promote the benefits in worker involvement in health and safety given that in my own personal experience I find it hard to imagine how one could ever put in place an effective workplace health and safety system that did not include real participation and engagement of the workforce.’

Trailing the December launch of a consultation on HSE’s new strategy, Judith Hackitt said: ‘HSE will make it clear that worker involvement and consultation is important in every organisation – where trades unions are present and where they are not and in all organisations irrespective of their size or dispersal of work locations.’

HSE will launch the consultation on 3 December at venues in London, Edinburgh and Cardiff. In October, TUC launched a safety reps’ charter, calling for more safety reps with more rights in more place.

As reported in the Risks Newsletter 383
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Vibration permanently harms man’s hands

As reported by Rory O’Neill in the Risks Newsletter:

A 24-year-old crack tester from Doncaster who says he was forced out of his job after vibrating tools permanently damaged his hands has received a £30,000 compensation settlement. Unite member Dean Grice was employed by MSI Forks Ltd, a firm making forks for forklift trucks. He had worked for the firm since 1997. His job required him to grind out defects on the forks using pencil grinders and angle grinders – tools which vibrated in his hands. As a result, he developed hand arm vibration syndrome (HAVS – also known as vibration white finger) – a painful condition which causes the fingers to go white and numb – as well as carpal tunnel syndrome, which causes numbness, tingling and pain in the fingers. Mr Grice explained: ‘It was my GP who told me that I had symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome and he referred me to the Doncaster Royal Infirmary. Sadly my employer refused to re-deploy me to a job where I wouldn’t be exposed to vibration so I had no choice but to resign.’ Unite regional secretary Davey Hall said: ‘This is not the first time that an employee of MSI Forks Ltd has suffered from hand arm vibration syndrome. We hope that it will now force them to ensure that correct health and safety procedures are in place.’ The two conditions are commonly associated with work with vibrating tools, and have been the subject of a series of recent industrial disease payouts.

Thompsons Solicitors news release

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Bosses jailed over worker’s death

News in the recent Risks bulletin from Rory O’Neill’s Hazards Magazine:

Two businessmen have been jailed for the manslaughter of a worker who was crushed to death at a concrete plant. Technician Christopher Meachen, 28, was killed at the Concrete Company at Costessey, Norfolk, in November 2005. Owner Timothy Dighton, 45, and area manager Roy Burrows, 46, both pleaded guilty at Norwich Crown Court. Dighton was jailed for a year and Burrows was jailed for nine months. Concrete Company, which has a head office in Peterborough and has 13 sites employing 104 staff, also admitted a charge of manslaughter. The company was fined £75,000 and ordered to pay £89,000 in costs. Christopher Meachen died at the company’s Minimix plant after becoming caught in an unguarded slew conveyer, which carried aggregate and sand up to the hoppers where cement is manufactured. He had only worked at the plant for two months and was due to marry his fiancée, Helen Pamplin, the mother of his three children, in the summer of 2006. The court heard the company had paid ‘no regard to the safety, the livelihoods or the physical wellbeing of decent men’ and his death would not have happened if managers had invested just £2,000 in safety measures. It has since emerged that the firm slipped off the radar of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) as director Timothy Dighton failed to inform the watchdog of the company’s existence. Judge Peter Jacobs said Dighton had ‘overall control’ of the plant where the emphasis was ‘on productivity and nothing else.’ He added: ‘He should have known it was totally unsafe and should have not allowed it to continue.’ Detective inspector Richard Graveling of Norfolk Police said: ‘These blatant breaches of health and safety, or indeed lack of any systems to address health and safety issues, can and do lead to fatal injuries, as we have seen in two cases in the last four years, and we will deal with them as major crimes. These convictions should send out a message to other employers in the area that they are fully responsible and accountable for the safety of their employees.’

Norwich Evening News BBC News Online

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Two companies heavily fined

Lessons to learn, about lessons that haven’t been learned, appear in two items of news in the recent Risks bulletin from Rory O’Neill of Hazards Magazine:

Firm fined after forklift worker is paralysed
A Berwick upon Tweed firm has been fined £20,000 after a worker was paralysed in a forklift truck incident. Silvery Tweed Cereals Ltd was fined and ordered to pay costs of £5,397 at Berwick upon Tweed Magistrates’ Court after pleading guilty to breaching workplace safety laws. Steven Rogers, 29, suffered the injuries in June 2006 after was pinned to the floor when a bin he was attempting to empty fell from the forks. Commenting on the case, Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspector Martin Baillie said: ‘In this case Silvery Tweed Cereals Ltd did not ensure the load was adequately secured, nor did they make a suitable risk assessment and they did not ensure that all of their operators received adequate forklift truck training.’ He added: ‘The tragic result was that one of the employees, Steven Rogers aged 29 of Berwick, sustained injuries which have left him permanently paralysed after a downgrade bin which he was attempting to empty fell from the forks of a forklift truck and pinned him to the ground.’ The HSE inspector said forklift trucks were responsible for just under 2,000 reportable incidents last year, including seven deaths. ‘Risks include being struck by a moving truck, crushed by an overturning vehicle, becoming trapped between a truck and an object or, as in this case being crushed by a falling load,’ he said. ‘Employers must ensure they assess the risks involved in any use of these vehicles and take appropriate steps to counter those risks. They must also provide adequate health and safety training for any employees operating forklift trucks.’

HSE news release

House manufacturer fined £65,000 for death
A Birmingham firm manufacturing new build homes has been fined £65,000 after a worker was crushed by a machine. Space 4 Limited, the timber frame manufacturing subsidiary of house building giant Persimmon Homes, was fined £65,000 with costs of £60,000 at Birmingham Crown Court following a prosecution by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). The case was brought after the death of Philip Macken, who was killed on 10 December 2001. Following a problem with an automated foam injection machine, he entered the enclosure to make an adjustment. While he was inside the enclosure the machine started automatically and Mr Macken was trapped against the machine and received fatal crush injuries. Speaking after the case, HSE investigating inspector Tony Mitchell said: ‘Companies need to ensure that all safety devices are fully operational. In this case properly fitted interlocks would have prevented access to the enclosure, and saved Mr Macken’s life.’ He added: ‘Guarding and fencing of automated machinery is a basic requirement and the standards are well known. Simple checks should be carried out to ensure workers are protected from dangerous parts and that safety features are fitted and in good order.’

HSE news release

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