A company in Aberdeen has been sentenced after an employee sustained serious injuries.
Miroslaw Pancyzk fractured both of his wrists and sustained a fractured middle finger on his right hand while working for Harper UK (Aberdeen) Ltd at the firm’s premises on 4 April 2022.
He had been using a piece of emery paper to polish a metal bar on a lathe when the paper snagged on the rotating workpiece.
This led to Mr. Pancyzk’s gloved hands being drawn into the machine.
As a result, both of his wrists were fractured and he wore casts for six weeks following the incident. The palm of his right hand required plastic surgery. He lost the part of his ring finger on his right hand and also fractured the middle finger.
A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found Harper UK (Aberdeen) Ltd, a supplier of equipment to a number industries including oil and gas, failed to implement an adequate means of protection. At the time of the incident, there was no chuck guard in place, an absence of tooling to allow the task to be undertaken safely and no risk assessment for this particular lathe.