Prosecution following Chemical Burns
The Health and Safety Executive has reported that it has fined a Leicestershire-based adhesives company £15,000 and ordered them to pay costs of £5,500 following a guilty plea to breaching Regulations 5 and 6 of the Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres Regulations, 2002, and Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974. The company failed ‘to ensure people not in their employment were not exposed to risks to their health and safety'.
Two agency workers, Wayne Saddington and William Christie Burton Gillespie, were instructed via a job card to ‘clean out a plastic barrel, add two solvents then use an electric mixer in a solid resin to mix them together'.
The HSE website reports that ‘as they began mixing, the flammable vapour above the liquid ignited, sending a flame shooting upwards. It set fire to Mr Saddington's hi-visibility tabard and singed the hair and burnt the faces of both men'.
HSE Inspector Will Pascoe said:
"Mr Saddington and Mr Gillespie had only been working at the company for a matter of weeks. They were not experienced in working with flammable liquids and were not aware of the danger they were putting themselves in.
"The company should have given them proper instructions; there should have been a risk assessment and a safe system of working. They should have been told to use a metallic drum which should have been earthed and they should have used a mixer that was suitable for use in an explosive atmosphere.
"Mr Saddington and Mr Gillespie were incredibly lucky not to have suffered more severe injuries. I hope this case serves as a warning to other companies not to put the lives of their workers in danger.