An employee at a Bolton fabric firm was dragged around a large rotating roller after his clothes became caught in the device, magistrates heard.
The 39-year-old local man, who wishes to remain anonymous, was trying to straighten a crease on a roll of fabric as it was being wound up, when the incident occurred on 17 October 2011. His clothing got caught on a pin, which attaches the roller to the motor and he was flipped round three times, suffering cracked ribs and bruising to the side of his body.
HSE inspector Emily Osborne, who prosecuted the case, told SHP that the worker would probably have only been dragged round once if it had not been for a defect on the nearest emergency-stop button. The machine was eventually stopped after his colleague activated another emergency stop, which was further away.
Inspector Osborne added that the employee was fortunate that he did not come into contact with any other parts of the machine as he was pulled round.
The incident, which occurred at Flameproofings Ltd’s factory on the Lyon Road Industrial Estate, prompted an investigation by the HSE. The investigation found that there were no guards on the machine to prevent workers from accessing dangerous moving parts. The HSE subsequently issued three Improvement Notices – two relating to guarding and the other to the thorough examination of the local exhaust ventilation on the production line – and initiated prosecution proceedings.
Trafford Magistrates’ Court heard that the company had carried out an assessment, which identified the risk of workers, clothes becoming entangled as a hazard, but it failed to act on this.
The company mitigated that it has since installed a new guard on the machine and changed its procedure for removing creases. It complied with all three Improvement Notices.
Sentenced on 18 January, Flameproofings Ltd was fined £6000 and ordered to pay full costs of £3600 after pleading guilty to breaching regulation 11(1) of PUWER 1998.
Inspector Osborne said: “The worker was badly injured because his employer didn’t do enough to ensure he could not become entangled in the machine.
“Flameproofings failed to act on the findings of its own risk assessment and install a suitable guard on the machine. It should also have made sure the defective emergency-stop button was fixed and working properly.”
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