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HAVS Noise exposure

£100k fine for health surveillance failings leading to HAVS

Hand Arm Vibration (HAVS) is something which we have covered many times before but an area in which many still have a way to go.  The following prosecution illustrates just how many are still getting it wrong and the suffering which is resulting from this.

If you’re a safety advisor or manager within an organisation who feels they should be doing more, the case below should help you justify to your board the actions which you need to take to protect them, your staff and the business.  If you need advice or support on HAVS then please do get in touch – it’s just one of the things we do to help and support our clients under Safety~net.

South Wales based Charter Housing Association fined £100k for health surveillance failings which led to HAVS

Cwmbran Magistrates’ Court heard how Charter Housing Association Ltd. reported six cases of HAVS following a health surveillance programme launched in June 2015. The affected employees were all part of the maintenance team.  Subsequently, the HSE’s investigation found that the health of six of these staff were likely to have been caused or worsened by the use of vibratory power tools while in Charter Housing’s employment.  It was further found that maintenance and refurbishment staff had also experienced significant exposure to hand arm vibration in their daily work which put them at risk of developing or exacerbating existing HAVS.

The investigation also revealed that the company:

  1. neither adequately planned its working methods nor trained or informed employees on the risks to their health
  2. did not limit the duration and magnitude of exposure to vibration
  3. failed to put in place suitable health surveillance to identify problems at an early stage.

Charter Housing Association Ltd (now part of Pobl Group Ltd) of High Street, Newport pleaded guilty to breaching Regulations 5, 6, 7 and 8 of the Control of Vibration at Work Regulations 2005. The company was fined £100,000 and was ordered to pay costs of £9,896.88.

HSE Comment

Speaking after the hearing HSE inspector Joanne Carter said:

“An individuals health should not be made worse by the work they do. If Charter Housing had correctly implemented its health surveillance earlier, it would have ensured the right systems were in place to monitor workers’ health. The six affected employees’ conditions may have been prevented from developing to a more severe stage.”

“How people work today can affect their health and wellbeing tomorrow. This case serves as an important reminder of the necessity of task based risk assessments to establish the level of exposure, control measures to reduce that exposure to as low as is reasonably practicable and effective health surveillance systems. In the case of Charter Housing this realisation came too late.”

“All employers need to do the right thing to protect workers’ health.”

Hand Arm Vibration Syndrome (HAVS) is a serious and permanent condition caused by regular and frequent exposure to hand-arm vibration. HAVS results in tingling, numbness, pain and loss of strength in the hands which may affect the ability to do work safely and cause pain, distress and sleep disturbance.

Posted by Roger Hart

Hand arm vibration syndrome (HAVS) – are you really managing the risk?

Hand arm vibration syndromeAll of us have our pet subjects.  Some of us do tend to bury our heads in the sand for areas in which we’re not as competent and Hand arm vibration syndrome (HAVS) is all too common an example.  You may, if you are honest with yourself, have a hit list of subjects which you mean to ‘review’ at some stage.

Local IOSH groups or similar can be a really good place to start in tackling these issues.  Other professionals will have been there before and will have found out its really not as bad as you might think, see our video below for more information..

One area we think you should look at afresh is controlling your risk from vibration.  We’ve been involved in assessments for many years now so if you need some help and advice just let us know.  If you’re still looking for that ‘good reason’ to make a start read the case below and if you have health surveillance in place please check our other blog post on competency requirements for these assessments: Hand Arm Vibration: Competency for HAVS Health Surveillance

Company fined for failing to manage Hand arm vibration syndrome risks

Newfield Fabrications Company, a manufacturer of steel components based in Cheshire, was fined £120,000 for failing to ensure that the risks to employees were adequately controlled.

Manchester and Salford Magistrates Court heard that in late 2015 the welder, who had worked at the company for several years, was given a job that involved a large amount of grinding and polishing.

After a few hours on the job, he began to experience numbness and tingling, commonly an indicator of exposure to high levels of vibration.  He asked to swap with another worker but he was told by his supervisor to carry on with the work.

A few weeks later, a 20 year old apprentice welder also began to suffer from vibration-related symptoms after using similar equipment.

An HSE investigation found that Newfield Fabrications failed to control employees’ exposure to hand arm vibration. The firm also failed to give its employees sufficient information, instruction and training on the effects of working with vibrating hand tools.

Newfield Fabrications pleaded guilty to breaching Regulations 6(1) and 8(1) of the Control of Vibration at Work Regulations.

According to the company’s accounts, it had a turnover of £7.7m in 2016 and made a pre-tax profit of £118,826.00 and so the £120,000.00 fine plus the £7241.00 costs is a significant sum for its Directors to find.

HSE inspector Helen Jones said:

“This is a case of the company failing to protect workers using vibrating tools. Exposure to hand arm vibration is a well-known risk which the company failed to adequately control.

“The company also failed to ensure workers were looked after when symptoms did arise leading to further exposure. This was wholly inadequate, and led to two employees suffering significant health effects.”

Posted by Roger Hart

Hand arm vibration – are you doing enough?

vibration white fingerHaving read of a recent case where a company was fined £200,000 plus £27,724 costs for a HAVS incident has made us revisit the vibration issue here in the office.

Each of us already know that the emphasis from HSE and our insurers is now firmly on health as well as safety.  We reported nearly two years ago that occupational deafness has become the new whiplash with claims rocketing and payouts of well over £10,000.

Vibration monitoring and assessment

We liken HAVS to COSHH and DSEAR as one of those areas which many of us know that we should tackle head on but we often find a number of other more pressing things we need to do instead – if this is you read on or make contact with your retained consultant to have a 5 minutes chat and find out more.

The truth is that many of us have made a good attempt as assessing our vibration risks and in many cases have felt that it wasn’t quite s bad as we had feared once we had got started.  However, as its something most of us don’t tackle every day that familiarity soon wears off and we find ourselves back as square one making he same old excuses.  Its also worth remembering that this dates back to the 1990’s and so we have very little in the way of excuses when it comes to defending cases or demonstrating our own safety management qualities to the Board.

Although the risks are certainly real the damage takes a long time to manifest, what we have to remind ourselves of is that this, like occupational deafness, isn’t going to reverse itself and the consequences for the person can be life changing.

You have in essence two choices; complete your own assessments or call in ourselves as external experts to complete this for you.  We can often work from manufacturers data and so costs are competitive and even if you do have specific processes which require vibration to work we can always monitor these individually and arrive at not just an answer in terms of exposure but also good advice on how you can control and reduce exposure.

So, don’t stick your head in the sand and hope this will go away or kid yourself that you’ll get around to it soon – if you need help contact us and if you’re too busy to be able to complete internally just ask your consultant, we’ll be glad to help out.

Posted by Roger Hart