A company has recently been sentenced after an employee sustained serious injuries whilst using a centre lathe.
He had both wrists fractured as well as a middle finger whilst working at the firm’s premises in Scotland.
The employee was using a piece of emery cloth to polish a metal bar on a lathe when the paper snagged on the rotating workpiece. This led to his gloved hands being drawn into the machine.
As a result of the accident, both of his wrists were fractured, and he wore casts for six weeks following the incident. The palm of his right hand also required plastic surgery and he lost the part of his ring finger on his right hand, also fractured the middle finger.
A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found the company had failed to implement an adequate means of protection. At the time of the incident, there was no chuck guard in place, an absence of tooling to allow the task to be undertaken safely and no risk assessment for this particular lathe.
The company pleaded guilty to breaching Section 2(1) and Section 33(1)(a) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The company was fined £10,000 at Aberdeen Sheriff Court on 18 June 2024.
This incident was easily preventable, and the risk should have been identified. Employers should make sure they properly assess and apply effective control measures to minimise the risk from dangerous parts of machinery.
Employers must ensure they have suitable and sufficient risk assessments for all machines and activities. This should highlight the requirement for adequate guarding and safe systems of work that must be enforced.
The HSE, Engineering Information Sheet No.2 (Revision 1) – The use of emery cloth on metalworking lathes should be read that provides acceptable methods of applying emery cloth
