Steel company fined £1,000,000

A Sheffield steel manufacturer has been fined £1,000,000 with £58,000 costs following an incident in August 2013 when an employee was severely burnt as the result of an oxygen pipe explosion. The injured party was carrying out checks whilst working on the line and heard hissing from a valve. As he went to investigate the noise, the pipe and valve erupted in flames.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found the oxygen pipe had been fitted with contaminated second-hand flanges and butterfly valve, containing materials unsuitable for use with oxygen. HSE stated that “It was foreseeable that work would at some point be undertaken on the oxygen pipelines which ran across the entire site, yet no action had been taken to take control of this line or to implement training or levels of responsibility for management of such work”.