The Health Protection Agency (HPA) has been fined after some of its employees were exposed to the risk of an E.coli infection.
The HPA pleaded guilty to breaching section 2 (1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and was fined £25,000 at City of London Magistrates Court and ordered to pay over £20,000 in costs. It follows an incident in 2007 when an amount of the bacteria spilled onto the floor of the site waste discard facility at the Centre for Infections in Colindale.
The HSE found that there had been an overall failure to ensure the safe handling of the bacteria and that the HPA had failed to assess the risk involved in the waste transfer and disposal process of E.coli and also that staff had not been properly trained in this regard.
HSE specialist inspector Jennifer Higham said: “E.coli 0157 is a highly infectious and potentially deadly bacterium and there are well established practices for handling this safely. But in this case, these practices were not met, exposing several staff and potentially their families to a real risk of infection.”
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