February

Spending falls on PPE

According to a new survey, the current recession is leading some companies to spend less on Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). The findings come despite the fact that the industry is already struggling with high levels of accidents and ill health.

The survey conducted for PPE product manufacturer, 3M, canvassed 226 workers and 127 health and safety managers in the UK in November and December 2008. The report showed that 8% of workers in the South claimed to have been given cheaper PPE because of the downturn while in Scotland the figure rose to 20%.

 Other key findings of the survey include:

• only 56% of respondents reported receiving regular PPE training, even though health and safety managers think that training is the most important method of ensuring workers comply with PPE rules;
• managers of the Olympic construction sites reported that they have 100% training and 100% enforcement;
• health and safety managers need more support with choosing the correct PPE; and
• workers need more information and education about the long-term effects that failure to wear PPE could have on their health.

A separate survey, carried out by National Accident Helpline, also showed that for some employers health and safety may be taking a back seat as financial pressures mount. 62% of employees surveyed said they believed their employer had placed less emphasis on health and safety since the recession hit.

Fork lift accident leads to prosecution

The HSE has warned of the danger of using unqualified staff to operate machinery after a forklift truck reversed into a supervisor, breaking his leg. The warning follows the prosecution of Line Mark (UK) Ltd at Rossendale Magistrates Court. The company pleaded guilty to an offence under health and safety legislation and was fined £6,665 and ordered to pay £2,052.82 in costs.

The company was charged under Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 for allowing an employee to drive a forklift truck without training.

Health and Safety Executive Inspector, Chris Smith, said: "This prosecution should serve as a warning to all companies to ensure that forklift truck drivers are fully trained and have the relevant qualifications. While this was a serious injury, it could have been far worse.

"Forklift trucks are a potential danger to their operators and to other people in the vicinity if not operated with great care. They should only be used by fully trained and qualified operatives.

"Forklift trucks are particularly dangerous in the workplace and, by law, employers must give employees adequate training to ensure their health and safety. Where possible, employers should also tailor training to the worker's individual needs.

"On average, forklift trucks are involved in 24% of all workplace transport accidents. These are often due to poor supervision and a lack of training."

The Health and Safety Executive publishes an Approved Code of Practice (ACOP) and guidance – Rider-operated lift trucks: Operator training – along with a list of accredited training organisations.

Police to negotiate over event policing costs

South Wales Police yesterday conceded to furious event organisers: “We will negotiate”. The force’s Assistant Chief Constable issued a statement confirming the force would not impose charges for policing major events without agreeing the bill with organisers.

He was responding after Cardiff City, Cardiff Blues, the Football Association of Wales, the Liberty Stadium and the Millennium Stadium issued a joint statement accusing the force of issuing “provocative threats” that could discourage promoters from coming to the capital.

However, Assistant Chief Constable Dave Morris said that if the force could not reach agreement with the organiser over the policing costs directly relating to the event it would refuse to grant a safety certificate. The force hopes to raise an extra £1m a year through billing event organisers for policing costs.

ACC Morris said: “It is important to highlight that amounts payable for Special Policing Services will not be imposed upon event organisers but will be determined though a process of negotiation between both parties.

“The necessary policing requirements for an event will vary according to the proportionate threat of risk or harm to the public attending that event.

“To this end, event organisers can reduce its need for special policing services by taking a robust approach to its own security and safety measures.

“Should an agreement not be reached regarding the level of policing required and or subsequent costs, then South Wales Police has a responsibility to notify the Local Authority Safety Committee which may review the granting of a safety certificate for the event.”

Mick Kluczynsk RIP

It is with much sadness that we bring you the news that Mick Kluczynski passed away on Friday February 6th after a short illness. Mick was a key member of the Pink Floyd touring crew from 1972 and highly valued by the band. Mick spent many years as the production director of The BRIT Awards and STAGESAFE were looking forward to working with Mick at a major event this summer before he retired.

Mick won the TPi (Total Production International) Lifetime Contribution Award in 2005 and the TPi Awards held on Monday February 9th were dedicated to him.

Company pleads guilty over workplace injury

The HSE yesterday warned firms to take proper precautions for employees working at height after a workman suffered serious injuries in a fall on a building site. The warning follows an HSE prosecution resulting from an incident in which a self-employed bricklayer suffered serious head injuries. The man fell 2.7 metres through a stairwell opening on the first floor of a house being built.

The main contractor on the site, Ballenwood Properties Ltd, was fined £3,000 by Pontefract Magistrates after pleading guilty to a breach of Regulation 6(3) of the Work at Height Regulations 2005. The company was fined a further £1,000 after pleading guilty to breaching Regulation 3(1) of the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) 1995. The company was also ordered to pay costs of £2,970.

After the hearing, Health and Safety Inspector, David Welsh, said:  "Falls from height are a major hazard especially in the construction industry. A significant proportion of the falls from height that occur on sites every year are internal falls, for example a fall inside a property, and the risks are frequently not dealt with adequately.

"The simplest way of dealing with the issue of an internal fall is to remove the risk altogether by covering any opening, such as a staircase aperture, with boards or putting a guard rail around.

 "Ballenwood's failure to report the injury, which is a legal requirement, was also a grave matter. HSE takes the non-reporting of major injuries seriously and, in appropriate circumstances, will add this to any prosecution charges that are brought."

 Slips, trips and falls from height are a major hazard in the workplace and are currently being highlighted by the Health and Safety Executive's Shattered Lives campaign. Last year alone there were five deaths and 1,402 major injuries caused by such incidents in Yorkshire and Humberside.

Union calls for more accountability on H&S issues

A union is calling on the Government to introduce statutory director’s duties, after the current voluntary code was shown to be what the union has called “a complete failure”. The union has led the campaign for the introduction of statutory directors’ duties, which would require companies to nominate a director responsible for health and safety. If someone died as a result of flagrant breaches of health and safety, there would be the possibility of a director being prosecuted and, if found guilty, the option of a custodial sentence.

 The HSE published a voluntary code in October 2007, and recently conducted a survey of companies to discover whether they were aware of the code. The survey, published in December 2008, showed that just 33% of companies were “aware of the code”.

The union has questioned the usefulness of the survey figures, though, saying that the survey excluded the 130,000 construction companies with fewer than five employees, despite the fact that these companies make up roughly 50% of the entire construction workforce. The union also points out that the survey did not record if companies had actually adopted the voluntary code.

 A union spokesman said:  “Once again it has been shown that construction companies have complete contempt for the voluntary code. This is not arguing over bits of papers. The introduction of statutory directors’ duties would help to make industries like construction safer almost overnight.

  “It is very difficult to retain faith in an organisation that continually distorts vital information. I urge the HSE to start telling the truth. Accept the voluntary code hasn’t worked, doesn’t work and will never work and join with the union movement in campaigning for the introduction of statutory director’s duties.”

Texting can indicate patient recovery

Teenagers who fiendishly text their friends apparently are more than just obsessive, compulsive, annoying and just plain incomprehensible to older generations. In certain situations - after fainting or panicking, for instance - texting can be a medical indication that the patient is recovering.

"The ability to text if nothing else is medically wrong may shows that the patient has recovered from the faint or panic attack," said Dr. Mike Sinclair, pit crew coordinator for Festival Medical Services, a British organization that supplies medical professionals to handle emergencies at music festivals. "Of course, if you break a leg, you are still able to text, but we use it as a sign in young people that have fainted or had a panic attack that they have recovered."

Sinclair is co-author of a paper on the topic, originally published in the December issue of BMJ and also reported in the February issue of Pediatrics. Two years ago, Festival Medical Services started using the method after noticing that most of the individuals fainting or panicking were teenagers, and they started sending messages on their cell phones as soon as humanly possible after an episode.

When the resuscitation tent located at the side of the stages is especially busy (sometimes up to two patients each minute), this "monitoring" system can be especially useful. At last August's Reading Festival, the medical team treated 142 patients in less than an hour during the performance by Bloc Party, and 130 patients in an hour-and-a-half while Rage Against the Machine performed, Sinclair noted.

The Reading Festival draws a crowd of about 100,000, and the Glastonbury Festival in June, which Festival Medical Services also covers, draws about twice that, including festival workers. According to the authors, being able to text is indicative of good executive functioning in the brain and "a degree of common sense not always evident in teenagers."

"It take a lot of cognitive work and dexterity in order for a kid to be able to text," said Dr. Robert Greenberg, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and vice chairman of emergency medicine at Scott & White in Temple. "What it is representing to me is that you can do an assessment on patients without really complicated type stuff." Sometimes just walking and talking can be an indication that a patient is recovering. "It takes a lot to do that," Greenberg said.

Fainting in young people can be caused by fear, standing still for too long, dehydration and more. Panic can stem from fear of being crushed or caught in a crowd, not an unreasonable fear given that eight fans were trampled to death in 2000, when Pearl Jam was performing at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, and 53 people were crushed to death during the 1999 Troitsa Festival in Minsk, Belarus.

Texting as a sign of recovery does need to be investigated further, Sinclair said. And it might be noted that the crew does check to make sure nothing else is wrong with the patient (such as low blood sugar). But do the texting messages kids send after fainting or panicking make sense? You be the judge:

"When we have asked the people what they are texting, there are usually three things: (1) I'm back stage [which they think is fantastic]; (2) I'm OK; and (3) Where can we meet up!," Sinclair said.

Artist denies manslaughter charges over inflatable

Amateurish safety precautions led to a huge inflatable artwork tearing free and twisting into the air in a strong gust of wind, killing two women inside, a court heard yesterday. Pegs and additional ropes supplemented by a trip to a B&Q supermarket failed catastrophically when wind caught the multicoloured Dreamspace V and flipped it sideways at a park in July 2006.

Artist Maurice Agis, 77, who had glued together translucent cells covering half a football pitch to create the structure, was accused at Newcastle upon Tyne crown court of manslaughter through gross negligence. "He has never produced any calculations or tests undertaken by anybody in advance of Dreamspace V being exhibited," said Paul Sloan QC, prosecuting. "There was not even a calculation of the maximum safe wind speed."

The court heard that survivors of the tragedy in Riverside Park at Chester-le-Street, County Durham, had given terrifying accounts of being hurled into the air and then plummeting to the ground inside the web of red, blue and yellow passages. Sloan said: "They were standing on firm ground one moment and then, as the structure took off and turned on to its side, [were] facing a sheer drop before tumbling down, bouncing off the internal columns as they fell."

The two who died were local women Claire Furmedge, 38, and Elizabeth Collings, 68, who had joined crowds on a sunny day at the fun afternoon organised by Chester-le-Street district council. They died a few hours after an alarm had been raised by a cleaner inside the inflatable before the event opened; she had seen part of the floor rise several feet in the air while vacuuming. Soon after people started entering, Dreamspace was briefly evacuated when the same thing happened again, with a little more force.

Agis made notes and listened intently as Sloan described how an earlier structure, Colourspace, had broken away during an event in 1986 in Germany. Sloan told the court that the disorganised safety system saw Agis visit B&Q in Chester-le-Street four days before the disaster to buy fresh rope, adding: "It is apparent that he was unable to purchase as much as he would have wished."

Dreamspace was supposed to have had 40 metal stakes surrounding it, but only 31 were found after the inflatable struck a CCTV pylon and collapsed as the wind was carrying it towards the river Wear. Precautions had been on the mind of Agis' team after the structure was evacuated several times because of gusty winds at Liverpool, its previous stop in a summer tour of Britain.

Mrs Justice Cox was told that after the second report of the floor lifting at Chester-le-Street, Agis had allowed visitors back in but had asked the management team from Brouhaha International, the Merseyside arts firm running the technical side of the event, to attach more ropes to the pegs all round the inflatable.

"They put some extra ropes at the front, to the left of the entrance, and along the left-hand side," said Sloan. "But they were then interrupted by Agis, who told them to resume duties at the entrance dealing with members of the public, so that he and his partner, Paloma, could enjoy a refreshment break. As a result, no additional ropes and pegs were attached to the rear of the structure."

Agis, of Bethnal Green, east London, denies two charges of manslaughter and one of breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. The jury was told that at an earlier hearing, Chester-le-Street council and Brouhaha International, whose managing director is Agis's son Giles, had admitted breaching the act.

The court heard the artist was "visibly shaken" when emergency services began ferrying seriously injured people away. When asked about the fact that the back of the structure had fewer pegs, he said he had thought a bank and belt of trees on that side formed a natural windbreak.

The case continues.

Roofing company owner found guilty of manslaughter

The HSE is urging companies to carry out full risk assessments following the prosecution of a company, IC Roofing Ltd, and its owner and director, Colin Cooper, at Hove Crown Court. Mr Cooper pleaded guilty to breaches of health and safety law. He pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges, but a jury found him guilty of the manslaughter of Darren Hoofe. He will be sentenced on Tuesday 27 January.

On 29 November 2005, 20-year-old Darren Hoofe was employed by IC Roofing Ltd to carry out work at the Bellbrook Industrial Estate, Uckfield. Mr Hoofe fell through a skylight onto the factory floor whilst carrying out roofing repairs. He was not wearing a safety harness and had not received full safety training. He died in hospital the following day from his injuries.

Sussex Police and the HSE launched an investigation into the circumstances of Mr Hoofe’s death. The owner and director of IC Roofing, Colin Cooper, was charged with his manslaughter and offences under the Heath and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.

Amanda Huff, HSE Inspector, said: “The tragedy of Darren Hoofe’s death is that it could so easily have been avoided. Colin Cooper showed reckless disregard for the safety of his employees even though the risks and necessary precautions were well known to him.

“If fatal accidents are to be prevented then work must be adequately planned and appropriate measures taken before work starts. If there is to be any positive outcome from this tragic death then it has to be that other roofing contractors appreciate that compliance with health and safety requirements is important and that failure to do so can have serious consequences.”