Common Causes of chemical injury claims at work

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The presence of chemicals, capable of causing personal injury, is more prevalent and across a wider range of workplaces than most people realise. From chemicals capable of causing varying degrees of occupational contact dermatitis and found in such commonplace goods as adhesives, cleaning materials and beauty and hairdressing products all the way through to chemicals that are capable of killing, serious personal injury or causing acute, long term health conditions with very little exposure and which are encountered mainly in the petro-chemical and other heavy industries.

These hazardous chemicals affect workers most commonly by the following means:

• Direct physical contact with the body, predominantly eyes and hands and usually the combined result of a chemical spillage due to incorrect storage, handling or use and the worker not wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) which would have provided an impermeable barrier, i.e. gloves or goggles.

• Inhalation of the vapours and gases of some chemicals, due to an accidental release of the vapour/gas or the lack of or inadequacy of a hazardous gas extraction system or as a normal part of the work process being undertaken by workers who haven’t been equipped with effective PPE.

• Affecting workers whose physiological constitution renders them more susceptible to the harmful effects than their co-workers who might not show any ill effects at all.

• Low level exposure over a long period of time, the harmful effects of which might not manifest for months or years after the commencement (and indeed ending) of that exposure, as in the case of fertilisers, sheep dip and weed-killers used, or previously used, in the farming industry.

Chemical injuries can thus be seen to be caused mainly by that ‘perfect storm’ of hazardous substance coming into contact with unprotected or/and untrained worker who might perhaps be working in an environment in which the control, containment or other engineering or process mechanisms for hazard elimination or reduction are not or only partially in place. This brings us on to the role of the employer.

If an employer due to his failure to discharge his duty of care to keep his employees safe and his lack of compliance with health and safety legislation is the reason or contributory reason that an employee suffers a chemical injury, then that employee could make a claim for chemical injury compensation. It’s as simple as that; bad employer + employee injured at work can = a valid claim for personal injury compensation.

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Common causes of injury and accidents in schools

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Amongst organisations, schools in the United Kingdom rank alongside those who place health and safety at the very top of their list of priorities. This is hardly surprising considering that they are responsible not only for the workplace health, safety and welfare of those they employ but also for the infinitely greater number of children who attend them. What is surprising therefore is that accidents to school staff are not infrequent and indeed in the year 2010-11 close to two thousand major accidents were reported to the Health and Safety Executive along with many thousands of accidents requiring staff to take three or more days off work.

The most common cause of accidents in both categories were slips, trips and falls on the level; nearly two and half thousand of them. This cause of accidents is the most common in a great many employment sectors and the reasons they occur are generally the same; badly maintained, contaminated, uneven, holed, frayed, chipped, and potholed floors and external surfaces. Schools are no different in that respect but the likelihood of slips, trips and level surfaces occurring is increased by the financial strain many state run schools are currently under and which can lead to backlogs in building maintenance occurring – not that this unfortunate situation in any way absolves a school from blame if it fails in its legal duty to provide a safe working environment for its employees.

The next most common cause of accidents is related to carrying and lifting. It is not immediately obvious that the work carried out in schools would involve a great deal of manual handling, but it does. From kitchen staff moving heavy pans of liquids and support staff carrying office supplies all the way through the front line and teachers having to transport teaching supplies or move equipment about in classrooms, lifting and carrying is generally and frequently carried out activity in schools. The fact that close to one and half thousand school employees experienced work related manual handling accidents sufficiently serious to require reporting to the Health and Safety Executive reveals the health and safety eroding combination of high work pressure and inadequate manual handling training existing in some schools.

Of the other statistical causes of accidents in school it is worth noting that over the last year nearly 800 school employees reported being hit by what the HSE categorise as ‘moving, flying or falling objects’. A good proportion of these accidents were the result of the crumbling of the fabric of under-maintained school buildings; only ‘physical assaults’ resulted in as many injuries in schools. So, whilst it is comforting to think of schools as organisations spearheading engagement with health and safety, the reality is that many are engaged in an uphill battle in this area.

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Please be aware that strictly enforced time limitation periods apply to all personal injury claims, and it is often easier investigating your compensation claim if you get prompt legal advice, while your accident is easy to recall.

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How to avoid dermatitis at work

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Occupational contact dermatitis is a widespread, under-reported, painful and unsightly disease which attacks the skin of workers exposed to any one or more of a surprisingly wide range of allergenic and irritant substances in the workplace, and can leave it swollen, reddened, cracked and blistered. The fact that so many employees contract dermatitis in the UK annually as a result of their work provides pretty conclusive evidence that some businesses risk management systems are in need of a revisit – or those businesses risk the chance of an expensive personal injury claim.

Preventing incidences of contact dermatitis at work is not a herculean undertaking for employers. Despite the relative ease with which this skin disease could be eliminated or greatly reduced in the UK workforce and the fact that undertaking to protect their employees from it is a legal obligation on employers under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 and the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 (amongst other regulations), the problem of employers failing in their duty of care to their employees in this respect refuses to go away.

 

Employers are legally obliged to identify hazards, environmental and work-related, assess risk and have control measures in place to protect their employees and this system should be regularly revisited and updated as necessary. When it comes to avoiding contact dermatitis at work, current best industry practice stipulates a three prong strategy designed to fulfil employers’ duty of care obligations:

1) Employee health and safety training – regular skin checks for indications of dermatitis, either carried out by a health professional or by way of self-examination. Training for employees about the nature of the substances they are exposed to in the course of their work, the risks the substances pose and the precautions that must be taken remove or reduce those risks. How to use the personal protective equipment supplied, such as barrier creams and gloves. Employees informed of the results of any exposure monitoring.

2) Protecting skin – skincare information available, including on recommended hand washing techniques and the use of pre and post work skin moisturisers.

3) Avoiding contact – by substituting the allergenic or irritant substances with safer alternatives, remove physical contact with the allergenic or irritant substances from the work process, automate the process or use equipment for handling.

It’s really not rocket science, and all that dealing with contact dermatitis requires is common sense and compliance with health and safety legislation.

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If you are the victim of industrial disease, it’s essential that you don’t delay claiming , or you may lose your right to compensation entirely. Wherever you live in England or Wales, one of our specialist personal injury solicitors can explain to you all about claiming injury compensation.

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Can I claim compensation for an accident in a school?

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The fact that you work in a school rather than in any other type of employment has no adverse effect on your right to claim personal injury compensation if you are the victim of a workplace accident. Your employer has a clearly defined legal duty to ensure both that your school is a safe working environment for all employees and also to ensure, as far as is reasonably practicable your health, safety and welfare whilst you are at work.

If you are unfortunate enough to have an accident at work that you feel wasn’t your fault you need to be able to determine whose fault it actually was. At this point it is well worth considering retaining the services of a specialist work accident solicitor, who will be able to accurately determine who was to blame for your accident and advise you as to whether or not you can bring your claim.

To be able to bring that claim for compensation for the accident you had at your school, the cause of your accident needs to be investigated. If that cause would not have existed if your employer had taken all reasonably practicable steps to eliminate it as they are legally obliged to do and if your accident was clearly a reasonably foreseeable consequence of your employer not taking those steps, then you might well be able to pursue your claim.

A relatively clear cut example of determining the viability of a personal injury compensation claim would be if a school employee broke her ankle falling into a water filled pothole as she supervised a playground. The Head Teacher had long been aware of the poor condition of the playground surface but remedial work had not been carried out. The poor surface constituted hazard and risk to the health and safety of staff and pupils alike.

The Head Teacher or controlling authority for the school has a legal duty to control that risk either by ideally repairing the playground surface or if that wasn’t immediately possible, preventing staff and students accessing it and erecting warning signs. If none of these steps had been taken the controlling authority for the school could have been clearly demonstrated to have been in breach of their legal health and safety obligations and duty of care to staff and students and as an injury was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of this breach, they could be held responsible for the accident.

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Avoiding a burn injury at work

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Employers are legally obliged to undertake a risk assessment for all the processes within the workplace that present a potential hazard to their workforce. These risk assessments must detail the hazards, the risks to health/wellbeing they represent and the measures to be taken to remove or reduce those risks. The contents of risk assessments and standard operating procedures need to be thoroughly familiar to employees as part of their induction and on-going training. If this process is competently followed through from beginning to end, the risks to employees will be identified and where reasonably practicable, removed or ameliorated. The risks of burn injuries should obviously be covered by the above.

Over and above that, employers have a duty of care to ensure that their employees come to no harm, physically or psychologically as a result of their employment and this duty encompasses the requirement to ensure that all staff are trained to safely use the equipment required to be operated in the course of their work and that that equipment is in good repair and safe to use. Employers must also make sure that their employees are aware of how to maintain a safe working environment and work without danger to themselves or others.

With regard to specifically avoiding burn injuries at work the following steps can be taken:

• Training workers in burn hazard awareness and reduction practices applicable to their workplace and duties.

• Employees remaining alert to burn hazards whilst working.

• Employees avoiding reaching through or over hot surfaces, areas, or corrosive chemicals.

• The use of personal protective equipment (PPE), e.g. gloves, goggles, aprons or overalls.

• Employees not undertaking tasks for which they haven’t been trained or which would place them in danger of being burned.

• Employees realising that steam can burn and some vapours can burn if inhaled.

• Only using correctly maintained and safe electrical equipment.

• Equipment with hot surfaces fitted with guards or warning signs.

• Keeping the workplace tidy so as to avoid slip, trip and fall hazards

If you have experienced a burn injury at your workplace caused by your employer failing to discharge his duty of care to keep you safe at work you might be entitled to claim compensation for your injury.

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How falls at work happen

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Falls from height have consistently been one of the most common causes of injuries sustained in the workplace according to the statistics compiled on year on year by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). The HSE divide their fall statistics between falls from height that involve steps and stairs and those that don’t but regardless of this statistical differentiation the injuries that result from such falls in totality can range from the immediately fatal through a spectrum to those from which recovery is rapid and complete.

The reasons such falls occur are many and varied and will be investigated below, but fundamentally they usually occur due to employers failing in their legal duty of care to their employees to remove or minimise wherever practical, the likelihood of injury as a result of the working environment and working practices. At one or multiple points along the Planning (safe working practices and procedures), Providing (a safe environment and safety equipment), Training (employees to be aware of health and safety issues and how to correctly use the safety equipment) (PPT) pathway, the employer fails and the employees can pay a heavy price with regard to their wellbeing as a result.

The most common manifestations of an employers’ failure to discharge their duty of care fall into two categories; firstly in an unsafe environment and/or equipment and secondly in a failure to train employees adequately, i.e. to operate machinery or use equipment safely and correctly and/or to be aware of health and safety issues and comply with health and safety regulations pertinent to their jobs. In practical terms this leads to the following circumstances most commonly causing falls.

The following list is not exhaustive but provides a good indication of the variety of situations and environments which directly contribute to falls in the workplace – it makes for depressing reading as these circumstances aren’t historical but currently occurring across the country as you read this. Poor lighting, lack of hand or guardrails on steps, badly assembled scaffolding, excessive weight on scaffolds, working on scaffolds in high winds, using badly maintained or unrepaired ladders, ladders slipping from under users, working on structurally unsound roofs, falling through roofs and skylights, working from height in trees with faulty harnessing or inadequate tree climbing training, a cluttered environment, uneven ground surfaces, wet or greasy floors, cleaning large immobile lorries, ice or snow, lack of training in how to spread body weight and minimise injury in the event of fall, a lack of personal protective equipment.

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Avoiding falls at work

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Is avoiding falls at work a personal responsibility of the employee? Partially it is, because if an employee acts in a reckless or deliberate manner with no regard to his safety or the safety of his colleagues and those actions are partially responsible for the accident and subsequent injury they sustain, any claim for compensation would have to take this, what is termed ‘contributory negligence’ into account, even if the working environment or equipment or machinery or lack of training also played a part in causing the accident. That said, in most personal injury compensation claims the responsibility for the accident is usually borne by the employer.

This weight of responsibility for an accident on the employer reflects the legal duty of care that employers have to ensure as far as possible, that no harm comes to their employees in the course of their employment. Essentially this means, in the case of preventing falls at work, ensuring that the working environment is tidy with no clutter, that floor surfaces are even and present no tripping hazard, that steps and stairs are fitted with secure handrails and guards, that lighting is adequate and that ladders and other machinery and equipment functions correctly and safely. They must also ensure that workers are kitted out with the appropriate personal protective equipment such as safety helmets and harnesses and footwear with non-slip soles.

This attention to making the working environment safe and providing safety equipment will all be for nought however, if the employer fails to adequately train their employers to safely carry out their jobs; to use and maintain their safety equipment appropriately and correctly, to understand the health and safety issues associated with those jobs, including awareness of the hazards they could potentially encounter and to make non-compliance with mandatory health and safety regulations a disciplinary offence where such compliance is included in job descriptions. For instance, a roofer would be trained in the assessing the structural integrity of a roof before placing his weight and that of his equipment upon it and warehouse workers would be made aware of the slip hazards presented by split liquids or grease on the floor, or carrying loads at height or over uneven surfaces.

To summarise; it is the combination of a safe workplace, adequate training and supervision and the personal responsibility of the individual employee that successfully results in the incidence of falls, and other accidents, being greatly reduced at work. Remove any of those ingredients to safe working and the workplace can once more take on the aspect of a hostile environment.

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Chemical Accidents and Claiming Injury Compensation

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The damage caused by accidents involving harmful chemical substances can be devastating. We have seen in Bhopal India (1984) and more recently in the Gulf of Mexico (2010), the human and environmental cost that comes with spills and explosions that expose us to dangerous materials. It is therefore important that the storage and usage of hazardous chemicals is strictly regulated.

Chemical accidents can occur in a number of ways which means health and safety standards must be met. Vehicles transporting chemicals, storage tanks and factories are all hazardous and can put people at risk. As a result, it is not surprising to see personal injury claims caused by contact with harmful chemicals.

The labelling and safe storage of chemicals is of paramount importance in preventing accidents. We are all familiar with the symbols warning us about toxic or caustic chemicals and such markings are essential in order to prevent confusion with consumer goods like drinks or hygiene products for example. The injuries that could be caused by a particular product should be made clear, whether it’s blindness, poisoning, burns or any other grievance.

Those working with dangerous chemicals should be provided with protective clothing which must be worn at all times. If this equipment in not provided you may find that your employer is guilty of professional negligence. The nature of the chemicals used will dictate the type of clothing required. Such clothing should be extensively tested before it is used by anyone to ensure that it is fit for purpose. If you suffer an injury whilst working with dangerous chemicals and you are not convinced that the necessary precautions were taken to protect you, you may be entitled to make a compensation claim.

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Sustaining a personal injury through exposure to harmful chemicals can result in physical and psychological trauma and it is only right that you are compensated accordingly if your injuries were no fault of your own.

If you are in need of any advice or information regarding accident or injury following a chemical spill, don’t delay, or you risk losing your right to injury compensation – email our specialist personal injury solicitors at advice@the-personal-injury-solicitors.co.uk or call us now on FREEPHONE FREEPHONE 0800 1404544.

Common causes of office injuries and accidents

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You couldn’t be safer than sitting indoors, in the warm, generally not touching anything more lethal than a computer keyboard and telephone – could you? Well as far as workplaces go, probably not, but that doesn’t mean that your office is an intrinsically safe environment, as the thousands of accidents that occur in office environments each year in the UK testify.

Mind you, it should be a safe environment – safe as houses. If you employer has diligently undertaken all their legal obligations to keep you safe there shouldn’t be any risk to your health, safety or welfare left unaddressed. This will have included assessing the risks in your working environment, putting the necessary control measures in place and fully training you and your colleagues in health and safety awareness, including such essentials as fire safety and manual handling and lifting and empowering you to be pro-active in keeping your office safe and how to avoid occupational illnesses and injuries.

If you have an employer who has been negligent in carrying out their legal duty of care towards you, many risks that you might not have even been aware of could exist in your seemingly safe environment and might lead to some of the following unfortunately relatively common accidents occurring:

• Slips and trips due to hazards such as cables running across floors and corridors, worn carpeting, unnecessarily slippery floor coverings, spillages not cleaned up quickly, items left in the middle of floor spaces, lack of desk storage allowing items to fall into the floor.

• Falls from standing on furniture (tables and chairs) rather than a step ladder to reach high places or inadequate lighting on stairs.

• Musculoskeletal injuries from attempting to carry, lift, push or pull objects without the appropriate manual handling training.

• Burns and other injuries from electrocution due to using electrical equipment that is faulty or which hasn’t been annually portable appliance (PAT) tested.

• Contamination from asbestos due to incorrectly carried out repair or maintenance to the building you work in.

• Asphyxiation from carbon monoxide poisoning due to faulty central heating boilers

• Injuries due to working with common office machines with partially exposed moving or very hot parts such as shredders, photocopiers, binding machines and laminators, without training and awareness of the risks such as catching hair, clothing or jewellery.

That’s quite a list for a cosy, safe office and needless to say some of the injuries suffered can be appalling and life changing and a few can be fatal. Health and safety is the key to making sure that a bad day at the office doesn’t suddenly get much, much worse.

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Common causes of injury when working with horses

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The British Horse Society, on average, is notified of eight accidents involving horses and persons who ride or work with them, each and every day of the year – and these reports do not by any means represent the total number of accidents and injuries involving working with horses in the UK. There are, in short, a lot of accidents and injuries in the equine sector but the injuries themselves fall mainly into just two main categories:

1) Horse inflicted injuries. These represent by far the most common injuries that are suffered by workers in the equine section. Such horse inflicted injuries usually result from a person being kicked, crushed or dragged by the horse. According to Health and Safety Executive statistics there are two horse inflicted injuries to every one of any other injury type suffered by equine sector workers.

2) Falls from height. – This is a common accident for employees in the equine sector but it is the primary cause of injuries for those not employed in the sector and who spend most of their horse related time riding one horse rather than caring for many horses. Recent statistics from America reveal that 85% of horse related injuries to non-employees are falls.

The accidents generally occur for the following reasons:

• Lack of training and awareness – horses can be nervous and unpredictable animals, easily spooked by traffic, sudden noises and unfamiliar phenomena. Like other animals they see humans as either a threat to be frightened of, of no importance at all, or to be obeyed. The failure of a rider or groom to understand or be tutored in basic horse psychology can make them vulnerable to accidents caused by the natural reactions of the horse, including the speed, force and reach of their defensive kick. The sheer bulk and weight of a horse can also be the main factor in accidents in which crush injuries are sustained.

• A mis-match of rider and horse – horse size and temperament have to be matched to rider experience. When they are not such mis-matches have been statistically shown to be the primary causal factor in the majority of equine accidents.

• Lack of suitable clothing and personal protective equipment (PPE) – Suitable clothing and PPE are essential for the health and safety of anybody who rides a horse.

It is the legal duty of the employer or the person in total or partial control of an equine establishment to ensure that their employees and those who aren’t employees operate in safe environment. A specialist personal injury solicitor can explain the eligibility criteria to any injured equine worker thinking about claiming injury compensation.

Making a horse injury claim

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