A factory worker has the hair ripped from her head by the moving parts in a conveyor system on her first day at work at a clothes hanger factory in north-west England.
In Essex, a young man's arm is torn off by the conveyor in a recycling plant as he attempts to remove a blockage.
Two appalling incidents that had a terrible, life-changing impact on their victims. That's bad enough. What makes it worse is that effective machine guarding could have prevented both these horrific events.
In the first case, 25-year-old Kelly Nield lost much of her hair, suffered horrifying throat injuries and fractured a finger when her scarf and hair caught in the chain and sprocket drive of the conveyor belt as she sorted products at Mainetti (UK) in Deeside in 2009.
She was forced to undergo a series of operations and remained in hospital for three months.
The company had fitted a guard to the conveyor, but it failed fully to enclose the dangerous moving parts. Also, there was no emergency stop button which could have reduced the impact of the incident.
Following the hearing in 2013, Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspector David Wynne had this warning: "There are well-known risks associated with working with conveyor belts. It is vital, therefore, that the risks are fully assessed and guarding provided to prevent access to moving parts. Where appropriate, emergency stop controls should be installed in readily accessible places."
Mainetti (UK) was fined £60,000 and ordered to pay costs of £21,668.
In the second case, an informal system was in place to clear conveyor blockages at MSK Waste Management and Recycling in Barking in 2012. This involved pushing a piece of wire through an opening in the side of the conveyor frame to hook items from between the roller and the belt.
It usually involved three people – one to use the wire, one to stop the conveyor via a control panel 75ft away and on a different level, and one to act as a go-between, relaying instructions.
However, on this fateful day, 28-year-old Domingos da Conceicao Freitas attempted to clear the blockage alone while the conveyor was still switched on because the control panel was so far away. His arm was drawn into a roller as he accessed the opening in the frame. There were two such openings, neither protected despite sliding guards being available.
Freitas lost his right arm. He is no longer able to work and struggles with day-to-day tasks such as washing and dressing. The company was fined £10,000 plus £5,944 in costs and £5,000 in compensation.
The tragedy is that these are by no means the only avoidable accidents involving conveyors to have occurred on the UK's factory floors. Around a dozen deaths and 40,000 injuries each year are caused by incidents involving poorly maintained or guarded machines including conveyors, according to the HSE, and most of these could easily be prevented.
Everybody loses when there's an accident at work – victims and their families endure months or years of misery, and companies suffer financially.
Incidents involving conveyors are among the most common causes of machinery-related injury. In the food and drink sector, for example, around 30% of all injuries caused by machinery are attributable to conveyors, more than any other class of machine. The vast majority of conveyor injuries occur on flat belt conveyors and 90% of these involve well-known hazards such as in-running nips, transmission parts, and trapping points between moving and fixed parts.
As Jeremy Procter, managing director of Procter Machine Guarding, says: "Unsafe conveyors present a very real danger. Not only can they cause serious accidents leading to severe crush injuries, broken bones, severed fingers, loss of limbs, etc, but an accident is also likely to result in a prosecution by the HSE, fines, costs being awarded against the employer, lost production, loss of reputation, overtime costs to catch up on lost production, and so on."
He advises always to perform a formal risk assessment to establish the hazards and determine what measures are required to reduce the risks. "And then re-assess the hazards to check that the risk-reduction measures are sufficient," he adds.
The risk assessment will need to take account of the standards to which the equipment is designed to conform. According to Procter, while there are some situations where a conveyor will be supplied as a standalone machine, and will therefore need to be CE marked, there are others where the conveyor requires a certificate of conformity so that it can be incorporated within a larger machine that is then CE marked as a whole.
But beware – a CE mark alone is no guarantee that the equipment is safe; it is just a claim of compliance and the validity of that claim depends on how the conveyor is being used.
For Mark Hodgkins, maintenance manager at the Sidcup, Kent site of Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE), the conveyor system's safety specification depends on the application. However, he says, you can apply general rules: "For example, the conveyor needs to be enclosed on the outside edges and should incorporate wear strips. When we specify a conveyor system, we ensure there are no exposed moving parts – they would be fixed guarded. The only interaction with a safety circuit would be through a line emergency stop, which would shut off all the conveyors."
CCE opts for fixed guarding before it considers any type of electromechanical interlocking. As Hodgkins explains: "There is less to go wrong and, if you can tie in the moving parts, there is less risk posed to the people working around it."
Procter adds: "Most hazards associated with conveyors relate to the nip points, which can easily draw in clothing, tools, fingers or limbs, depending on the size, speed and power of the conveyor... a formal risk assessment should indicate what measures are necessary."
Other hazards, he says, exist in the vicinity of transmission components, couplings and tensioners. The moving edge of the belt can, itself, be a hazard and personnel need to be protected from spilt, ejected or falling material, especially where conveyors run overhead: "In line with general good practice, the objective should be to design out hazards rather than safeguarding them, but, in reality, this is unlikely to be feasible where conveyors are already operating or have been purchased as standard or configured-to-order units."
Guarding the hazardous parts of conveyors may be by design (for example, lift-out rollers that prevent fingers being trapped), fixed guarding which requires a hand tool to remove, or hinged or removable interlocked guards such as guards fitted with coded, magnetic switches to prevent the machine running with the guard removed.
Where new guarding has to be installed, says Procter, take care to ensure that no new hazards are introduced and that plant efficiency does not suffer: "For those reasons it is essential to consult with managers and workers before designing the new guarding. Additional measures can also be taken, such as fitting remote greasing points so that the conveyor can be lubricated without having to remove guards, and belt alignment mechanisms that can be operated from outside the guards."
Guarding should also be designed, so far as possible, such that routine cleaning and clearing of spillages can take place without disturbing the guarding – for example, by incorporating rodding access points.
Finally, says Procter, don't underestimate the importance of education, training, safe systems of work, power lock-offs and effective supervision: "Safe start-up procedures – typically with warning sounders and a time delay – are an example of how to improve safety where it is not possible to view all the hazardous areas from the control station," he concludes. ¦
Rules to help maintain a safe track record
There is a mass of health and safety legislation and standards relating to conveyors. However, the most relevant regulations are probably Regulation 4 of The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 and Regulation 11 of The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (http://bit.ly/1GG5upH).
Both require a hierarchical approach. The priority is to eliminate any hazards at source. Where elimination is not possible, effective guarding should be used. Instructions to employees not to operate a conveyor without fitting peripheral guards are further down the risk hierarchy.
Regulation 11 of The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 is relevant to the provision of effective conveyor guards. Regulation 11(1) requires effective measures to prevent access to dangerous points. Regulation 11(2) provides a hierarchy that demands primary measures are fixed enclosing guards and, where impractical, other guards.
Regulation 11(3) says guards should not be easily bypassed or disabled, and be constructed to allow access for necessary maintenance if possible without having to remove them.
Safety laws often use the term 'as far as is reasonably practicable'. This means guards should be fitted where hazards are identified unless it can be shown that this is disproportionate to the risk.
