There have been three prosecutions to date this year of UK foundries, the details of which are shared below. It is important to remember that the press releases from the HSE will never speak of any good actions taken by the businesses but will only refer to
Read more →Following the resulting levels of enforcement issued against UK foundries as a result of their silica campaign visits which ran from October 2022 until present, at the CHASAC (Castings Health and Safety Advisory Committee) meeting in January, the HSE have undertaken a review of the outcomes. Given
Read more →In October 2022 the HSE started their latest proactive inspection campaign looking at users of silica. This campaign includes foundries. However, in additional to the control of silica on site inspectors are also reviewing metal fume and also dusts. The seven key steps in producing castings are
Read more →The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) are investigating a number of molten metal/moisture explosions that have occurred in UK foundries in the past twelve months. Currently there are four active investigations underway. The Cast Metals Federation, following the latest HSE CHASAC meeting in March 2021, have produced
Read more →Employees exposure to workplace noise, vibration, dusts and fumes are still significant issues being found by the HSE during their visits to metals sector businesses. Besides these, there is the ubiquitous matter of machinery guarding. All of these should have been addressed by industry by now, given
Read more →People say you can’t truly understand the costs of doing health and safety versus not doing it. This may be true, it may not be. There are many intangible effects that are hard to quantify, but somethings such as less sickness absence, less accidents resulting in time
Read more →There is new scientific evidence from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that exposure to mild steel welding fume can cause lung cancer and possibly kidney cancer in humans. The UK Workplace Health Expert Committee has endorsed the reclassification of mild steel welding fume as
Read more →In their operational year 2017/18, the Health & Safety Executive issued a total of 34 notices (32 improvement, 2 prohibition) to 20 UK foundries. The notices cover both safety and occupational health ranging from unguarded machinery through to lack of cleaning and maintenance of cooling towers to
Read more →