The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) has fined a Slough-based stone fabricator £60,000 after failing to protect workers from prolonged exposure to hazardous silica dust.
HSE inspectors reportedly made a total of nine visits to Inova Stone Ltd over a six-year period, and said they found “little or no improvement” to their concerns throughout that time.
During one such visit, HSE inspectors said they were “stunned” when employees told them that “no-one is in charge of health and safety”. According to the HSE, that visit occurred after concerns were raised about unsafe working practices at the fabricator.
As a result, the HSE identified several breaches of health and safety law at the company, namely a failure to control exposure to dangerous respirable crystalline silica dust.
The material, which can be released when cutting into high-silica engineered stone products, is particularly dangerous if inhaled over a prolonged period of time. Current advice from industry trade bodies such as the Worktop Fabricators Federation (WFF) says that the products are still safe to use, but only if fabricators follow strict health and safety rules.
In addition to failing to protect its staff from harmful silica dust, inspectors from the HSE also say that staff were allowed to use unguarded machinery, and the company was also not storing its heavy stone slabs safely, putting workers at risk of serious injury.
Following the inspection, Inova Stone was served with four improvement notices, and the resulting investigation also revealed similar notices had been served to the company four years earlier.
Subsequently, Inova Stone Ltd pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act, in addition to three charges for failure to comply with an improvement notice. As a result, Staines Magistrates Court fined the business for £60,000, and it was ordered to pay an additional £7,363 in court costs.
“Inova Stone Ltd failed to comply with legal notices requiring them to make improvements and repeatedly showed a lack of commitment to managing health and safety,” said HSE principal inspector Karen Morris, after the hearing.
“After being provided with advice and guidance over several years, the company had plenty of opportunities to comply with the law, yet they consistently failed to do so. The fine imposed should send a clear message to employers that the risks from working with engineered stone must be taken extremely seriously.”
In related news, the WFF recently launched a new silica dust awareness campaign, intended to deliver “bite-size” safety training to stone workers via their mobile phones.
kbbreview has reached out to Inova Stone for comment.
