A college has been fined a total of £32,000 after failing to ensure the safety of a lecturer, who suffered severe burns when an acid mix exploded over him. Gary Baird was showered with the dangerous combination of concentrated nitric acid and ethanol at the City of Bristol College in May 2006. He required two separate skin grafts and an operation on his right hand.
Over a period of three years, Mr Baird regularly mixed the two substances in order to create nital, an etching solution used by engineers to test a weld's durability. A Healthy and Safety Executive (HSE) investigation found that the college had not provided the lecturer with adequate training to compose the agent. Furthermore, senior staff were unaware that he had attempted the mix unsupervised.
Nathan Peacey, prosecuting for the HSE said, "Mr Baird's last memory is undoing the bottle and turning to his right to get the reference book he had been using as a guide. He noticed the surface of the acid was creating ripples and then the bottle went bang - covering him with acid and glass. One colleague described how he could hear Mr Baird sizzling, and could see his bone."
The college pleaded guilty to failing to ensure the health and safety at work of their employees and in particular, to failing to ensure safety with the use of hazardous substances. In a statement, Richard Thorold, director of Estates and Resources at the college said, "We take the health and safety of all our staff and students extremely seriously and our good health and safety record was recognised in court today. In light of the incident the college has significantly increased the resources available. This includes establishing a team of dedicated health and safety practitioners, a staff training programme at all levels and we now have a very robust set of procedures to ensure an accident like this is not repeated."
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