Automotive component manufacturer fined after worker loses fingers

Date:

17 February 2012

Release No:

HSE/EM/308/12

A firm specialising in manufacturing rubber components for the automotive industry has been prosecuted after a worker suffered disabling hand injuries.

The 46-year-old worker from Coalville, Leicestershire, who has asked not to be named, has been left with only the thumb on his left hand fully intact, after the incident at Schlegel Automotive Europe Ltd's Coalville factory on 4 March 2010.

Leicester Magistrates Court heard he was clearing a blockage around the heated nozzle of a 20 tonnes injection-moulding machine when the nozzle was pushed through his left hand, causing severe injuries which later resulted in the amputation of all four fingers. As the worker is left-handed, his injuries have made him unable to carry out some simple everyday tasks and he has been off work for 17 months.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found that the machine was in a poor state of repair. The interlock system on the guard that should have prevented the incident had not been maintained, and therefore it failed to operate properly. A subsequent audit of other equipment in the factory found safety improvements to a number of other injection-moulding machines were necessary.

After today's hearing, HSE inspector Dr Richenda Dixon said:

"This was an incident waiting to happen. The guard should have been interlocked to prevent workers being able to access dangerous hot moving parts of the injection moulder.

"There was no clear system of work as to how employees were meant to remove hot waste rubber. This task needed to be done several times a shift.

"It appears the interlock system may have been broken for several years. There had been a system for checking and recording that machinery guards were in full working order, but it had fallen by the wayside.

"Had the company carried out regular preventive maintenance and acted upon the results of daily checks on the safety systems on this machine, a man might not have suffered such a dreadful debilitating injury."

Schlegel Automotive Europe Ltd, of Beveridge Lane, Bardon Hill, Coalville, pleaded guilty to breaching section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. The company was fined £9,000 and ordered to pay full costs of £6,584.

Information on injection moulding machines is available on HSE's website at www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/ppis4.pdf

Notes to editors

1. The Health and Safety Executive is Britain's national regulator for workplace health and safety. It aims to reduce work-related death, injury and ill health. It does so through research, information and advice; promoting training; new or revised regulations and codes of practice; and working with local authority partners by inspection, investigation and enforcement. www.hse.gov.uk
2. 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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