Young people's lack of awareness of health and safety issues

A serious injury to a young warehouse employee highlighted a number of important safety issues for employers in the warehousing and commercial storage sectors, including supervision of inexperienced workers. A 22-year-old employee received a crushed vertebra and fractured pelvis after he fell 3.5 metres from a temporary platform erected between two racking units in a warehouse. According to investigators, a competent supervisor would have recognised that working at such a height on unsecured boards was unsafe, and should not have been attempted.

A 19-year-old worker was crushed to death by falling steel bars. He had been working underneath a suspended load, held in a sling that was operated by another relatively inexperienced worker. Neither the young worker, nor the person he was working with, in charge of the site, had received adequate instruction and training. Investigators emphasised the duty that employers have to ensure that workers and their supervisors are trained, and urged all construction firms to review their training and induction procedures.

An 18-year-old apprentice mechanic died four days after becoming engulfed in flames in an explosion. He was helping his manager empty a mixture of petrol and diesel from a dustbin into a waste oil disposal tank when the petrol exploded. A flue pipe outlet from a gas boiler was situated next to the tank and was switched on at the time: the petrol vapour ignited in a massive fireball. The young man was learning the trade, and was dependent on the duty of care owed to him by his manager and the garage owner. The attitude of the company was that health and safety was a matter of common sense, left to the experience of employees.

A 19-year-old went to work for a company that cleaned industrial and residential ductwork. He and his co-workers were cleaning the inside of a duct that was part of a paint booth. It was the 19-year-old's job to scrape the paint residue off the walls of the duct. While he was inside, paint particles ignited, resulting in a fireball. He crawled out of the duct with third degree burns to over 82% of his body.

A 22-year-old agency worker was hit and killed by a train while working on a busy area of railway track. The student had only worked a few shifts and had received only basic personal track safety training. Safety procedures and supervision were inadequate. Following the incident the employment agency introduced a number of changes including a mentoring system to monitor the progress of new staff.

Two young migrant workers (21 and 27) died after becoming entangled in machinery used on a fruit farm. The task involved the erection and dismantling of ‘poly-tunnels’, which are secured using long ropes. They became entangled while using a tractor-mounted machine to wind up the rope. Risk assessment was lacking, and the tractor-mounted winder was unsuitable, as it did not have an automatic cut off in the event of entanglement. The workers had not been adequately trained, nor made aware of the dangers posed by the task. Investigators drew attention to the fact that many of the workers on the farm were students, who might not have much understanding of safe working practices.