Unguarded machine death no risk assessment

Railcare Ltd has been fined £133,000 (reduced from £200,000 on account of a guilty plea) at Glasgow Sheriff Court, for a breach of Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, following the death of one of its employees in December 2008.

The Court heard that John Smith, who had worked at the company for some 30 years, died as a result of head injuries sustained whilst working at an axle lathe that had an unguarded chuck.

One of the machines which Mr Smith used was a 25-year-old Universal and Production Centre Lathe, referred to at Railcare as the axle lathe. Given its age, it did not come with interlocking guarding, but guarding was available for the dangerous parts of the machine and should have been in use.

The dangerous part of the lathe was the chuck, which is used to clamp and rotate work pieces. This is also the element of the lathe which spins the work piece and at the time of Mr Smith's death, the chuck was spinning in an anti-clockwise direction (towards him) at 600 rpm.

One of the jobs which was undertaken in the premises was the cleaning and polishing of sets of wheels from railway vehicles by use of the axle lathe and this was the task Mr Smith was doing on the day of his death.

Mr Smith had been cleaning the axle by looping a length of emery cloth around it, holding one end in each hand and then operating the lathe at high speed. By then pulling back and applying pressure to the axle surface, paint would be removed from the surface of the axle.

The HSE investigation revealed that cleaning axles in this way had never been assessed for the risks it posed to employees. Moreover, none of the processes in place at the premises had identified the lack of a guard on this chuck.

Article supplied by RoSPA