Man died in recycling plant shredder

Horrible story.
I used to work in a factory where people would regularly go out of their way to bypass the safety gates if they could. Risk your limbs for a few pence more an hour on piecework...
 
Had something similar to this happen years ago when I was working for a local refractory. One of the maintenance blokes had gone into the clean a blockage in a machine that reverts damaged, but unfired, bats back into powder by forcing them through ever decreasing gauges of metal mesh.

That wasn't a pretty sight. He was basically reduced to lumpy raspberry jam.
 
Reminds of that story I saw a while back about a guy who died when he got his head stuck in a Hydraulic press...eugh. It doesn't bear thinking about.
 
Orionaut said:
I don't mean to make light of this at all, but I really hope he ended up going in head first! :(

Now I do not know what happened here, but it is often taken for granted in situations like this that, somehow, the "Management" are to blame for "shoddy practice". However.....!

The trouble with safety devices (And I remember this from my experiences in the electrical industry 30 years ago)

They are often a complete PITA for the people who actually have to endure them. As a consequence the biggest problem for management is members of the workforce devising "Secret Workarounds" that disable the safety systems so they can make their working lives easier.

I remember people who had machined out the insides of their safety interlock keys so they could enter HV compounds to perform "Minor" (IE Non electrical) work without having to have operated the keys "twin" first to switch off the power so they could save a bit of time/effort/ballache! :eek:

Unfortunately the consequence of this sort of thing is that, sometimes, people end up being badly injured or killed!

The "Longer term" solution to this problem is, perhaps, to make a greater effort to try to make safety "Easy". But somehow I cant see that happening any time soon sadly :(
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Yup not quite the same scale but all the striaght/angle head windy drills in our place have this annoying safety latch on the trigger that makes using them one handed a night are. But it stops the trigger pressing if say it's put down or it rolls onto the trigger (trigger is a big long lever) so mine and everyone else has this little latch taped up so you can use it easily but yeah it could go off if you knocked it with your foot or hand an it rolled onto the trigger
 
I used to work in a recycling factory called E.P.P. (Environmental Polymer Products).
They had shredders and various things for reducing plastic from say 50kg chunks to small rice crispie sized pellets.
One of the machines was known as the crumber and was basically a 1m diameter x 1.5m tall food blender that you threw about 100 kgs of polythene into and it came out like crumbs.

One weekend both fitters were in (who happened to be brother in laws) to change the blades on the crumber.
After the guy had climbed out of the machine and spoke with his brother in law stating the machine was ready and it was now time to go for a cup of tea he decided to climb back into the machine without the other fitter knowing.
The other fitter decided as the machine was now ready for action and his brother in law had gone for a cuppa that now was a good time to spin her up.

The only upside is the unfortunate guy would've died instantly.

Apparently the fire brigade had to pour him out like soup.
The poor guy that switched the machine on was never quite right after that.

Yours truly then became the fitter there for the next 7 years until it's foreclosure and made sure (along with the H&S Rep) that all machines were safe.
 
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I was recently told by a friend (in the legal profession) of a case where someone's hand got pulled into a mincer. They were compensated for the accident, but the employer was not liable for the accident. Why? Well the employer trained people to use a tool (a sort of rod) to push meat into the mincer, but for whatever reason, this employee decided to use their hand.

Now, did they sell the mince I wonder?
 
Orionaut said:
I don't mean to make light of this at all, but I really hope he ended up going in head first! :(

Now I do not know what happened here, but it is often taken for granted in situations like this that, somehow, the "Management" are to blame for "shoddy practice". However.....!

The trouble with safety devices (And I remember this from my experiences in the electrical industry 30 years ago)

They are often a complete PITA for the people who actually have to endure them. As a consequence the biggest problem for management is members of the workforce devising "Secret Workarounds" that disable the safety systems so they can make their working lives easier.

I remember people who had machined out the insides of their safety interlock keys so they could enter HV compounds to perform "Minor" (IE Non electrical) work without having to have operated the keys "twin" first to switch off the power so they could save a bit of time/effort/ballache! :eek:

Unfortunately the consequence of this sort of thing is that, sometimes, people end up being badly injured or killed!

The "Longer term" solution to this problem is, perhaps, to make a greater effort to try to make safety "Easy". But somehow I cant see that happening any time soon sadly :(
Click to expand...

At risk of sounding harsh, anyone who deliberately circumvents devices designed solely for stopping incidents like this, is asking for an incident like this.

The only unfortunate thing about it is it's usually not the person who did the circumventing who ends up getting killed.
 
Thompson_NCL said:
I was recently told by a friend (in the legal profession) of a case where someone's hand got pulled into a mincer. They were compensated for the accident, but the employer was not liable for the accident. Why? Well the employer trained people to use a tool (a sort of rod) to push meat into the mincer, but for whatever reason, this employee decided to use their hand.

Now, did they sell the mince I wonder?
Click to expand...

As an aside, I can recommend the dark comedy "Consuming Passions"

It is a story about how a failing chocolate factory discovers a "Secret Ingredient" that makes their product irresistible! ;)
 
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