When lack of paperwork proves fatal

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The report in the Daily Mail yesterday on an accident at Greenfields Limited in Leicestershire paints a picture of a dreadful fatal accident involving two men at their place of work.

One of them, 19 year old Nathan Walker, was expecting his first child – who was born 15 days after his death.

Nathan was cleaning a tanker, used in the process of recycling food waste to make bio fuel and pig feed. He had only worked for the company for two months and concerns had been expressed by colleagues prior to his accident about the lack of suitable breathing equipment, as the product they work with can cause toxic fumes.

Lack of paperwork

Gavin Rawson tried to help Nathan when he got into difficulties but, due to the lack of breathing equipment, they both became overcome by the fumes and drowned.

Paperwork such as ‘Risk Assessments’ are often bemoaned as unnecessary red tape by some. In this case Risk Assessments, and the lack of appropriate health and safety measures, have led to criminal convictions for the company owners.

A Risk Assessment would have identified the risk of working with toxic fumes and the measures required to protect against accident would have been the missing breathing equipment. When a risk and a preventative action is in black and white, it should be harder for companies to ignore it. Risk Assessments became law in 1992 and the HSE state their purpose is to:

Identify what could cause injury or illness in your business (hazards)
Decide how likely it is that someone could be harmed and how seriously (the risk)
Take action to eliminate the hazard, or if this isn’t possible, control the risk.

In the fatal example reported in the Mail, a Risk Assessment would have worked in the following way to help prevent the accident happening. In response to the three points above, the answers would have been:

Employees being overcome by toxic fumes in the process of cleaning the tanker.
High risk of such an occurrence, given the volumes of the product employees are working with.
To eliminate the risk, breathing apparatus should be provided.

It is clear to see that Risk Assessments can simply and directly identify risk factors and provide, often simple, solutions. Without them, and in the ‘nitty gritty’ of each day, it is easy to see how mistakes can happen and unnecessary risks can be taken, either by management or the employees who work for them.

The other factor in the case is the fact that complaints had been made about the situation and no action taken. As employees, there is action you can take if your company ignores concerns. The HSE website encourages workers, on noticing a health and safety concern, to speak to the person in charge, their employer and/or their union/employee representative.

They also have sections of their website dedicated to certain topics, which provides helpful information. Ultimately, workers can report issues directly to the HSE themselves .

Whilst it is deeply sad that the company did not act on complaints (and if they had the accident could have been avoided), workers at the company themselves, if they had reported issues directly to the HSE, may have impacted the outcome of this tragic story.

The report in the Daily Mail yesterday on an accident at Greenfields Limited in Leicestershire paints a picture of a dreadful fatal accident involving two men at their place of work.

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