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November News Letter
1st Nov, 2007 to 1st Mar, 2008
Insufficient ventilation led to LPG blast
Two men in Lancashire, received serious burns after a heater ,being used in a shipping container, exploded. A court heard that Mr Fretwell received burns to his hands, arms and face and spent two weeks in hospital and Mr Wild suffered problems with his respiratory system and had to undergo a tracheotomy because of the explosion.
Investigating inspector Sheldon Taylor said, “the container was unmodified” and “LPG (liquid petroleum gas) is more dense than air and will sink, so low level ventilation should have been provided. The container only had a very small amount of ventilation at a high level and was therefore wholly unsuitable for storing an LPG bottle and heater.”
The inspector described that the heater had been modified so that the flame failure device, which will only allow gas to be used while there is a flame, was not working. If it had it not been tampered with, gas would not have escaped when there was no flame.
At court heard on 7th June, the company ( named Colne Body Shop and vehicle and chemical spills recovery J D Macadam and son.) pleaded guilty to breaching s(2)1 of HSWA 1974 by not ensuring the safety of employees and were fined £4000 and were ordered to pay HSE costs of £3372.
Companies fined £240,000 over site death
A series of heavy fines have been handed to Miller and PJ Carey after being prosecuted for the death of a worker in 2003. On the 12th June, Miller construction were fined £127,000 and PJ Carey were fined £117,000 for their involvement in the death of an employee. Justin Taylor was fatally hit by a dumper truck with faulty breaks in Maidstone in 2003.
Peter Collingwood, Inspector of Health and Safety, said: "The companies involved failed to carry out even the most basic checks on the driver’s ability to safely operate a dumper. It is likely that a trained driver would have recognised that the dumper was unsafe to be used and that it should be taken out of service until repaired.”
30m fall kills teenage construction worker
A 19-year-old workman has died on a project to construct a wind farm on a Stirlingshire hill.
The accident victim, said to be a Brazilian, fell a distance in excess of 30m down the inside of one of the wind farm turbine towers.
Construction statistics 2005/6
981 (27%) major injuries to construction employees resulted from a slip or trip. As in previous years, falling from a height accounted for a high number of major injuries, 917 (25%) in 2005/06.
The next two most common kinds, both accounting for 16%, were being injured while handling, lifting or carrying (577) and being hit by moving/falling objects (572).
Lost Hours!!
An employee of Macclesfield Borough Council became so intoxicated by the herbicide that he was applying to grounds throughout the Borough that he cannot account for his movements on the night of 12th April 2006 during which time his wife alerted the authorities to his absence.
Investigation by HSE officials found the Council had failed to properly instruct, inform and train its employees concerning the equipment and materials they worked with, for which it was fined £3,000 after pleading guilty to a breach of S.2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.
Assess the electricity risk
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has warned construction companies to carry out proper risk assessments especially where there are overhead power lines close to work activities. The warning comes after a worker was electrocuted when the machinery he was operating came in contact with 11kv power lines on a North Wales site.
Barbeques could mean bad news
Mount Sinai School, of medicine New York have suggested that those health conscious people may wish to boil, stew or steam their food instead of cooking on the barbeque.
High temperature cooking methods, such as grilling and frying release Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs) in meats and cheeses which increases the risk of life threatening diseases such as kidney and heart disease.
Dr Helen Vlassara, who was the lead author of a study into this says that excessive consumption of fried, broiled and grilled foods can overload the body’s natural capacity to remove AGEs affecting changes in the immune system which result in chronic inflammation leading to oxidative stress.
Advice
Cooking food on a cooler barbeque or hob and maintaining the water content will minimise the release of AGEs. Moreover adding sauces that contain lemon or vinegar can help to counteract the effects.
Worker Paralysed after site fall
A carpenter was left paralysed after breaking his spine when he fell off an unsecured ladder on a building site.
John Greig, 47, lost all feeling in his lower body and has been told he will never walk again following the accident in Llanishen, Cardiff, in January 2005.
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