Personnel Hygiene Services (PHS) Ltd has been prosecuted following a major explosion at a waste management site that caused three workers to sustain serious burns.
The blast at Burscough Industrial Estate in Lancashire occurred on 12 October 2010 when aerosol cans were put into an industrial shredder.
A joint investigation by the HSE and the Environment Agency found that PHS had allowed around 150 aerosol cans containing extremely flammable substances to be put into a large shredder at the site on Tollgate Crescent, Burscough.
Three employees working near the shredder were caught in a fireball, and surrounding buildings had to be evacuated while the firefighters dealt with the resulting blaze.
Nearly 60 police officers were deployed to oversee road closures and control a cordon around the site. There was extensive damage to the large warehouse that housed the shredder.
Liverpool Crown Court heard that PHS did not have a procedure in place for checking the contents of boxes of waste material delivered to the site. The investigation found that the company failed to ensure that a chemical specialist monitored the waste being put into the shredder to check for flammable substances.
A risk assessment, which had been carried out in April 2010, was found to be wholly inadequate after the company wrongly identified the risk of aerosols being added to the shredders as ‘very unlikely’, and the consequences of this happening as ‘moderate’, which meant no action was taken as a result.
On 3 October, PHS Ltd, of Western Industrial Estate, Lon-Y-Llyn, Caerphilly, Wales, was fined £105,000 and ordered to pay prosecution costs of £45,000 after pleading guilty to section 2(1) of the HSWA 1974.
Following the hearing, HSE inspector Neil Rothwell, said: “The chemical waste industry has the potential to be extremely hazardous, and PHS could and should have done more to protect the lives of its employees and the public.
“The issue of waste materials being wrongly labeled is well-known in the industry, so PHS shouldn’t just have assumed it could add cardboard boxes to the industrial shredder without first checking what was in them.”
In a statement to SHP, a spokesperson for PHS said: “The health and safety of our employees is of paramount importance and this incident dating back to October 2010 is a matter of great regret.
“We have co-operated fully with the HSE and Environment Agency at all times during the course of their investigations and have taken steps to prevent any such incident happening in the future, including reviewing and updating our processes and investing in state of the art equipment in all of our relevant sites.”
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