The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has warned employers that they must take appropriate steps to reduce the risks to the health and safety of their staff.

The plea comes following the prosecution of a Lincoln company which exposed its employees to potentially damaging levels of noise, and an incident where one employee suffered a fractured foot.

Mico Tomic, 34, from Lincoln, was cleaning a plasma cutting machine on 13 September 2007 at G.B. Logan Fabrications Ltd, Deacon Road Lincoln, when he removed the machine’s spoil drawer, weighing 40kg, tripped over a pallet of waste material and dropped it onto his foot, resulting in a fracture.

The company was yesterday fined £5,000 and ordered to pay £3,390 costs by Lincoln Magistrates Court after pleading guilty to breaching regulation 3(1) of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 for failing to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety of its employees.

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G.B. Logan Fabrications Ltd also pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 6(2) of the Control of Noise at Work regulations 2005 for failing to reduce the noise exposure of employees from machinery, in this case a computer numeric control punch press. This came after an HSE inspector recorded significantly high noise levels during a visit and noted that previous advice on noise had been given to the company.

HSE's investigation found that G.B. Logan Fabrications Ltd had not researched any means of controlling noise exposure, and was relying on hearing protection to safeguard individual workers' hearing.

Practical steps that could have taken to reduce noise exposure from these tyres of machine are set out in HSE guidance available since 2002, and include organising the work to separate people from noisy machines, and technical measures such as screens, barriers and enclosures.

Proper application of these measures would have helped protect the entire workforce, as well as the worker actually operating the machine.

(JM/KMcA)