EDITORIAL - March 2008

Another mad rush to try and get the newsletter published only slightly behind schedule. As well as personal commitments I have been spending considerable time in Norfolk running a series of training courses for a large food manufacturer. The CIEH certificate for supervisors (now branded as a Level 3 Award) has been extremely popular. I have also been rushing around the West Country inspecting a chain of Italian restaurants (Bottelino’s). Their pastas and pizzas are so good I have had to buy another bicycle to avoid putting on even more weight!

No new horror pictures from work in the Photo Gallery - just a very colourful photo of a competent guy carrying out safety checks. I was happy to put my life in his hands for an extremely enjoyable trip.

Do you think HSE feel the need to increase their income? They have recently brought out the third edition of PUWER 98 ACoP, the third edition of RIDDOR 95 Guidance and new guide to LEV to consolidate and replace the previous two guides (see below for an explanation of the safety shorthand!).

A recent £2 fine plus £1 costs seems rather derisory for an explosion in 2005 that killed one worker and seriously injured three others. The accident happened because the company had changed from using LPG to a non-hazardous gas some weeks previously. Unfortunately, stocks of LPG were still present and were released by mistake to form a fireball that engulfed the factory.

The Judge said going into liquidation had saved a £250 000 fine! HSE had taken the case to enable them to investigate and ensure the liquidation was genuine rather than a means of avoiding justice. Of course, if it happened today the Company Directors would be under investigation for Corporate Manslaughter (albeit with probably the same result!).

The theme of  Recent Cases, below, is the folly of not learning from experience or listening to advice. In every instance it was known that there was "an accident waiting to happen" but no-one had bothered to take the appropriate action.

Finally, may I correct a misconception about the properties in Rock’s Frolics – it is not my house where these disasters happened (but thinking about it there have been a few interesting situations I could use in future editions).

 Ken Rock

PUWER 98 ACoP = Approved Code of Practice for the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998.

RIDDOR 95 = Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995

LEV = Local Exhaust Ventilation

LPG = Liquefied Petroleum Gas

BODY ART

Confused messages around at the moment about body piercing and tattooing. It seems ridiculous that tattooing a person under the age of 16 is illegal but there is no age limit for body piercing; the rationale being that a body piercing is usually reversible! It is also thought that setting an age limit for body piercing would result in even more youngsters piercing themselves and their friends!

It is thought that more than a quarter of the people pierced suffer from swelling, infection and bleeding; the number of infections is certainly increasing as piercing of body parts other than the ear lobes becomes more fashionable. MRSA, C difficile, Hepatitis and HIV are just a few of the potentially life threatening infections from unhygienic piercing and tattooing.

Many years ago I was involved with the police in a joint stake-out and raid of an unlicensed tattoo parlour. It was in the living room of a rather grubby house with horrendous hygiene problems (needles were supposedly boiled in a saucepan on the domestic cooker). The police successfully prosecuted for tattooing minors (not miners!) and I prosecuted for the rather trivial offence of not being licensed. Because they were not licensed they had no statutory obligation to operate in a hygienic manner!

ROCK’S FROLICS

During the inspection of a house I opened the toilet window moments before the householder shouted that I should not open the window because it was difficult to close. Sure enough, the casement was larger than the frame so I got a good grip on the handle and exerted considerable pressure. The casement banged into the frame as the glass popped out onto the pavement below!

My Guardian Angel must have, yet again, been working hard because the sheet of glass landed flat and unharmed!

We’ve often heard of teachers, volunteers and carers being told to ask parents for permission, or even requiring parents to drive over and put the plaster on themselves. This persistent myth causes a lot of unnecessary hassle and worry.

The reality

There is no rule that says a responsible adult can’t put a plaster on a child's minor cut. Some children do have an allergy to normal plasters. If you know a child is allergic you can use the Hypo-allergenic type of plaster. The important thing is to clean and cover the cut to stop it getting infected.

Taken from the HSE website myth

APPEAL COURT SUPPORTS COMMON SENSE

The Court of Appeal have recently declared that if you take part in a dangerous sport and get injured you do not have an automatic right to compensation.  Actually, that is nothing new; there never has been a right to compensation unless you could prove someone had been negligent.

However, over the past 20 years or so the Courts, to a certain extent, and the insurance companies, to a very large extent, have simply accepted almost anything as evidencial proof of negligence. This judgement simply takes us back to the previous situation where someone must have been demonstrably and culpably negligent for a claim against them to be successful.

The specific case that triggered this decision was a young man who was paralysed after jumping off a climbing wall at a leisure centre and falling badly onto the safety matting below. Initially the Crown Court found the leisure centre 25% liable because they had not specifically warned him that the safety matting did not make the wall safe (albeit there were signs prohibiting jumping from the wall).

The appeal judges considered it obvious that safety matting would not protect from an awkward fall and that climbing involved an inherent risk. The leisure centre could not be held negligent and hence liable because someone had failed to read the displayed safety notices.

It is considered that this judgement sets a precedent that will protect the leisure industry from future litigation; maybe we shall soon see a return to common sense in other areas such as the workplace!

RECENT CASES

Yet another prosecution relating to a cook suffering severe scalds from boiling oil. A table top fryer was located on the top of a fridge when the cook’s apron caught the handle and tipped the fryer over as she squeezed through a 30 cm gap. A similar accident had happened previously but no-one had been hurt because the oil was only warm. The business owner was only fined £5 000 plus £1 205 costs to reflect his financial position and his prompt guilty plea.

Waitrose have recently been fined £20 000 for failing to provide a safe system of work, £5 000 for not having a risk assessment and £4 792 costs after an employee broke 2 bones in his arm while operating a cardboard compactor. Apparently similar instances with less serious consequences had happened in two other stores. The maximum fines allowable in a magistrates court were imposed; the magistrates said that if the company had not pleaded guilty they would have sent the case to the Crown Court for sentencing (where the fines are unlimited).

Environmental Health News, 20 June 08

Failure to implement the recommendations of their own risk assessment resulted in a £60 000 fine and £15 347 costs for a bus company after an employee was injured falling into an inspection pit. Amazingly, another employee had died after falling into a pit at the same garage a year earlier –yet the company had still failed to implement simple control measures!

You might think that advice from an HSE Inspector, attendance at an HSE Advice Day and having your insurance company condemn your Local Exhaust Ventilation system for unsatisfactory performance would suggest the need for urgent action. Not so for an engineering company with poor machine guarding and worker exposure to toxic dust hardwood dust. A second visit by HSE was followed by 2 Prohibition Notices, 8 Improvement Notices and 2 Summonses (resulting in a £12 500 fine and £5 000 costs)!

£18 000 fines and £34 361 costs split between 2 contractors because the giant screen built in central Birmingham to display the World Cup collapsed (fortunately no-one was hurt). An independent engineer had refused to sign off the rigging because he did not consider it capable of withstanding foreseeable winds. However, his report, including a warning not to add banners, was ignored to enable the screen to be ready for the start of the big event. Birmingham City Council were extremely lucky not to find themselves in the dock with their contractors.

Safety & Health Practitioner, July 08

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