"suffered burns after an incident involving machinery, hot aluminium"

Over the decades the frequency and severity of molten metal burns has decreased. That has been done with modernization of equipment, better molten metal resistant clothing, and training. Decades ago it was common for workers to die because of molten metal would set their clothing on fire. Now a days the vast majority of our plants workers were PPE that is fire resistant and can repeal molten metal. Nevertheless, molten metal burns still occur in our industry. In our experience these burns occur if workers are in the wrong department, not wearing the proper PPE, or their PPE is worn. Worn out PPE is a problem throughout our industry. We have heard numerous times that workers will complain that once their PPE clothing feel comfortable it is then time to replace it. Here is a recent story emphasizing the need for proper PPE clothing and usage.

An industrial worker is responding to treatment in a hospital 500+ kilometers away after he was burned while working at an aluminium smelter business in May 2017.

The man was flown to after an incident at Aluminium (company).

Two days later a spokeswoman for the hospital confirmed the man remained in a “critical but stable condition.”

It is understood he suffered burns after an incident involving machinery and hot aluminium.

The aluminium company community relations specialist said the employee was being treated. 

“We can confirm that a workplace incident occurred at the (company) Aluminium smelter on (May 2017), in which a male employee was seriously injured,” she said. 

The man was transferred to hospital by air ambulance.

“We are providing support to the employee and his family, and to employees who assisted in the emergency response,” The aluminium company community relations specialist added.

The aluminium company has started its own investigation “and will continue to work closely with the relevant authorities to determine the cause of this incident”.

We are providing support to the employee and his family, and to employees who assisted in the emergency response.- said the aluminium company community relations specialist

The aluminium company and the government safety organization spokeswomanwould not elaborate.

"(The government safety organization) is investigating an incident that occurred at a (aluminium company) business on (May 2017), which resulted in a worker suffering serious injuries,” the spokeswoman said. “It is expected that "(The government safety organization)'s investigation will take some time to complete, and no further information will be provided while it is ongoing.”

Many times we are unaware if a worker succumbs later to their injury. One incident that comes to mind was a dust explosion where initially 40 workers were killed and over 200 were injured. Later we found that all the injured workers succumbed to their injuries. Does it matter that when we post that the result might not be accurate? Would it be more impactful if we updated when an injury eventually lead to a fatality? We are not sure. We know that every injury and every death is very hard for us to write about. On our plant visits we talk about how many tears are shed by posting these stories. We tell that to our audience not for them to feel sorry for doing this blog. But, for them to realize that there is a family, friends, co-workers behind every worker who is injured or killed. We tell our audience that even though we omit the personal information from the stories, we simply cannot forget them, nor can we forget the pictures of their faces. Our hope by publishing these incidents is that we can prevent recurrence. We normally end every speech to factory floor workers that is our hope that they never become injured or killed while on the job (or in life in general). But, if they do in our industry and it makes it into the news media. We will post the story and weep.

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog prays that the worker survived his injuries and is recovering as expected with no complications. If we can update this post in the future we will.

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