Amputation separates AEI Compounds from £130,000

Prosecutions and Claims |
12.08.2007

A development technician lost her arm in rotating machinery because her employer ignored the dangers of laboratory machinery, despite having  recognised the same hazard on its production equipment.

The accident in July 2005, in which Nicola Bauckman lost her left arm below the elbow, cost plastics firm AEI Compounds £125,000 in fines after it admitted two breaches of health and safety legislation.

She caught her arm in a Buss PR46 compounder (a machine used to produce small quantities of trial product) as she cleaned around the rotating kneader screw. To aid the cleaning process, the machine is kept at about 100 degrees, so operators have to wear heat-resistant gloves and forearm protection.

HSE investigating inspector Trevor Jones told HSW that cleaning the machine with the power on was standard practice in the laboratory. To complete the final clean, operators would routinely run a rag or the heat-resistant glove along the rotating screw.

Bauckman - who had worked at the laboratory for only six weeks - caught her glove on a notch on the screw as it turned around at about 56rpm. There was no emergency button and no one else in the area. Emergency services rushed her to hospital but doctors failed to re-attach her recovered arm and hand, and she has not worked since the accident.

AEI had failed to carry out a suitable risk assessment for the machine.
"[AEI] had started to do risk assessments but had not got as far as that machine," said Jones.

There was no safe system of work for cleaning and maintaining the compounder. In 2001, it had issued a note to the production department not to clean machines while they were rotating.

"But it thought that because this machine was smaller and apparently slower, it was also safer," he said, "so it failed to communicate the instructions to the laboratory." It was completely unnecessary to keep the power on to turn the screw during cleaning, he added, as operators could easily have turned it by hand.

At Maidstone Crown Court on 12 June, Judge McDonald fined the firm £100,000 for failing to protect employees as required under Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act. He also fined it £25,000 under Regulation 3(1) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations for not having a suitable risk assessment, and ordered it to pay £6,479 costs.