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May/June 2023 issue

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Manufacturing and engineering
News

Heightened cancer risk from welding fume exposure prompts HSE to tighten controls

Open-access content Tuesday 12th February 2019
From the archive:  Just so you know, this article is more than 3 years old.

Heightened cancer risk from welding fume exposure prompts HSE to tighten controls

The Workplace Health Expert Committee (WHEC), which was set up to provide the HSE with independent, authoritative and impartial expertise on workplace health, has endorsed the reclassification of mild steel welding fume as a human carcinogen and prompted the regulator to issue a safety alert STSU1 -- 2019, which ramps up the HSE's enforcement expectations (bit.ly/2RWCkeV).

The HSE has informed employers that regardless of duration, it will no longer accept any welding undertaken without any suitable exposure control measures in place because there is no known level of safe exposure. The stricter enforcement measures come after the IARC evidence showed that general ventilation does not achieve the necessary control.

Control of the cancer risk will require suitable engineering controls for all welding activities that take place indoors, which includes local exhaust ventilation (LEV). The HSE has also called on employers to use extraction as this will also control exposure to manganese, which is present in mild steel welding fume and can cause neurological effects.

The regulator has also warned employers that where LEV alone does not adequately control exposure, they should supplement it with adequate and suitable respiratory protective equipment (RPE) to protect employees from the residual fume.

Appropriate RPE should be provided for welding outdoors, the HSE adds, and welders should be suitably instructed and trained in the use of these controls.

Businesses have been told that risk assessments should reflect the change in the HSE's expected control measures.


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Image credit: ©Simon Ledingham (cc-by-sa/2.0)

 Sellafield to admit breaching HSW Act after worker contaminated

Wednesday 27th February 2019
The operator of the world’s largest nuclear waste storage and reprocessing site in Cumbria intends to admit a health and safety breach.
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 Poultry co fined £274k over workers’ severed fingers

Tuesday 12th February 2019
Food manufacturer 2 Sisters Food Group has been fined a total of £274,000 after two workers sustained hand injuries at its poultry factory in Flixton, Suffolk.
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 SIG Trading implements gross misconduct policy after worker loses fingers in machine

Thursday 14th February 2019
A steel cladding manufacturer that was fined £600,000 after a worker’s hand was crushed in a metal bending machine has made working inside light curtains an act of gross misconduct.
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 HSE-sponsored research seeks to build remote visual inspection and wearables capability

Wednesday 6th February 2019
Sponsors are being sought to co-fund two shared research projects, which will help the UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) improve the use of remote inspection technologies and increase take-up of wearables in the workplace.
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 Yardman loses leg after forklift accident at chicken facility

Thursday 21st February 2019
A poultry producer has been fined £866,650 after a forklift truck driver reversed into a yardman and injured him.
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The worker's gloved hand was drawn into the machinery. Image credit: HSE

 Apprentice severed fingers after gloves caught in three-roll bending machine

Thursday 31st January 2019
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found the apprentice was forming a piece of sheet metal into a radius using a three-roll bending machine when his gloved hand was drawn in by the in-running nip between two steel rollers. The HSE found that the accident, which happened at Air Management & Design's premises on Spencroft Road in Newcastle-under-Lyme on 3 March 2018 was more likely because he was using fully fingered gloves.
Open-access content
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