Caldercoat: overdue LEV testing, lapsed health surveillance and a Christmas peak

The reasoning that sets the order

Isocyanate asthma is sensitiser-driven: once someone is sensitised the effect is generally irreversible, and the only reliable protection is preventing exposure. Two operators have already reported breathlessness, and the control that should be preventing exposure has two independent failures - a face velocity 40% below commissioning, and no thorough examination for 16 months. Add no health surveillance, so early effects would not be detected even if they were occurring. The cost of two days' output is real but recoverable; a case of occupational asthma is not.

Actions, in order

1. Protect the people now: stop mixing on mixer 3, or restrict it to a substance and task that the residual extraction can control. Do not accept 'keep going to Christmas'.
2. Verify the other three systems: treat them as unproven until a competent person has thoroughly examined and tested them, which should be arranged immediately. The pattern of late tests suggests all four are degraded.
3. Health surveillance: engage an occupational health provider urgently, prioritising the nine exposed operators, with a respiratory questionnaire and, where indicated, spirometry, and referral for the two with symptoms. Explain to them why they are being seen and that reporting symptoms will not be held against them.
4. Interim controls while repair proceeds: RPE fit-tested and face-fit checked, restricted access to the mixing area, containment of open vessels, closed-lid mixing where possible, and reduced batch sizes to lower emission.
5. Record and notify: record the exposure situation honestly, record the advice given and the production director's decision, and be aware that an occupational asthma diagnosis may be RIDDOR-reportable.

The judgement here is that a statutory examination overdue by two months is not an administrative lapse when the substance is a sensitiser - it is a signal that the control may not be working, and the face velocity reading confirms it.

Speak in his language, and do not soften the advice

Open with the fact that decides the question: the LEV is measurably failing and has not been examined, and isocyanates cause asthma that does not go away. The choice is not '£180,000 versus nothing'; it is '£180,000 now versus an uncontrolled exposure continuing for a further eight weeks and into the busiest period, when pressure and shortcuts are greatest'.

Make the comparison explicit

• One occupational asthma case typically means a lifetime of reduced function, possible redeployment or loss of a skilled operator, a civil claim, and an insurer conversation. Set that against £180,000.
• Enforcement exposure: overdue thorough examination, failed control, no health surveillance for a sensitiser. If an HSE inspector calls - and the next asthma case may bring them - the site faces improvement or prohibition, a fee for intervention, and possibly a much longer stoppage than two days.
• Customer exposure: retail and industrial customers audit their suppliers. An asthma case and an enforcement notice are far more damaging to the contract than a short, well-managed interruption.

Offer options, not just a refusal

• Split the work: repair and retest mixer 3 first, run the remaining mixers within verified capacity, and resequence which products are made.
• Use the two days at a point where the penalty exposure is lowest; ask what the customer penalty actually is versus £180,000 of output - the penalty may be the smaller number.
• Bring forward a temporary extraction or enclosure as a bridging measure if it is genuinely effective.

Then close the loop

Put the advice, the risk, the options and the director's decision in writing to him and to a director with authority for health and safety. If he insists on delay, the adviser's duty is to ensure the decision is informed, attributable and recorded - not to make it quietly.

Reading the pattern

Four separate things failed, and they failed in ways that suggest no one owned them:

• The thorough examination was late twice - so there is no compliance calendar, no named owner, and no trigger that escalates a missed date.
• Face velocity was measured against a commissioning figure but the reading did not raise an alarm - so results are filed, not reviewed against an action threshold.
• Health surveillance stopped when a contract ended - so a service is treated as discretionary spend with no renewal trigger and no contingency.
• Symptom reports went to a supervisor and were recorded as 'out of condition' - so there is no route from a concern to occupational health.

Underneath all four is one governance failure: production decisions are taken without a health input, and no forum exists where occupational health performance is visible to the people who control the budget.

What to put in place

1. A compliance calendar with a named owner for every statutory examination, inspection and surveillance cycle, with an escalation date set before the due date.
2. An LEV asset register holding commissioning figures, action thresholds and test dates, with results reviewed and signed off against the threshold, not simply filed.
3. A contract-management trigger for occupational health, with a second provider identified and a documented handover.
4. A simple, publicised symptom-reporting pathway: any worker can ask for occupational health referral; supervisors cannot reclassify a respiratory concern.
5. A quarterly H&S performance report to the board with leading indicators - tests on time, actions closed, surveillance coverage, symptom referrals - so the trade-off between output and exposure is made by the people accountable for both.

The point is not to write five procedures; it is to attach each duty to a person and a date, so that 'after the Christmas peak' has to be argued for explicitly rather than allowed by default.