Warning to companies as firm fined after man badly burned

Date:

22 January 2009

Release No:

HSE/EM/852

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is advising galvanising companies to check their operation procedures after a man was badly burnt when colleagues underestimated the weight of a beam.

Worksop Galvanizing, of Claylands Avenue, Worksop, was fined £7,000 and ordered to pay costs of £ 4,465 at Worksop Magistrates today (22 January) after pleading guilty to breaching Section 2 (1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 by failing to ensure the safety of its employees.

Peter Allen, 37, of Worksop, was on his third shift at the factory when wires holding a beam being lowered into a bath of molten zinc broke. One end of the beam fell into the bath (the biggest in Europe - 21m long, 1.5m wide, 2.7m deep) and splashed zinc over him. His body and face were badly burnt and his eyesight has still not recovered.

Investigations revealed that the company was relying on workers estimating the weight of beams rather than measuring them.

David Butter, inspector of Health and Safety at Nottingham, said: "Working safely isn't just about protective equipment, it's about every worker being trained to do their job with minimum risk.

"Experience told Mr Allen's colleagues to get out of the way fast when the wire broke, but he was too inexperienced to realise what was happening quickly enough and was badly burnt.

"Workers were also deciding what strength of wire to use purely by estimating, and in this case didn't use different strengths to take into account that the beam was heavier at one end than the other. Worksop Galvanizing is now weighing and assessing beams properly, and HSE is updating its formal advice to the industry to promote this as best practice."

Notes to editors

Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 states, "it shall be the duty of every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees."

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Issued on behalf of the Health and Safety Executive by COI News and PR East Midlands.