Food waste firm fined for toxic gas hazard
16 Jun 2016
A food waste disposal and recycling company has been fined £250,000 after three employees were overcome by toxic gases from its animal waste facility in Stoke-on-Trent.
In April 2014, an employee of John Pointon & Sons accessed a compartment within an animal waste trailer to free animal waste and was overcome by the gases, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) told Stafford Crown Court.
Two further employees then entered the waste compartment and were also overcome by the gases that included hydrogen sulphide.
The court heard that this incident might have resulted in fatalities, and John Pointon & Sons was fined £250,000 with costs of £37,362 after pleading guilty to breaching regulations for health and safety, and working in confined spaces.
The court also heard that the company has been prosecuted twice before for two fatal incidents that involved confined space entry within a processing plant.
In June last year the company was fined £660,000 after a worker died as he tried to fix an industrial cooker, the HSE said.
The self-employed contractor was carrying out repairs inside the cooker at John Pointon & Sons in 2011 when steam from elsewhere in the system fed into the area where he was working, fatally scalding him.
Another employee was killed at the same site in 2004 when he entered a confined space without proper precautions being taken.
