November 22, 2004—The UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has launched a new enforcement-led campaign to reduce the unacceptable high number of fatal and serious injuries that continue to occur in Britain’s manufacturing industries. The nationwide campaign will see HSE inspectors targeting scrap metal, rubber, paper, and wood industries over the next three years to ensure that correct procedures are in place for working on machinery.
During the past three years over 40 people have died as a result of incidents in the manufacturing industry, most commonly when cleaning machinery blockages or carrying out running repairs without the correct safeguards, according to HSE. Properly managing isolation and lock off procedures to secure machinery and ensure there is no power feed to the equipment lowers the risk of serious or fatal injury. Further information on using machinery safely can be found on the HSE Web site.
