The owner of an asbestos management firm has insisted that safety breaches he has been taken to task over were only “trivial matters”.
The Health and Safety Executive has handed Modus Limited an improvement notice after the company breached three regulations, including failing to provide adequate training and suitable respiratory protective equipment (RPE).
Although Modus Limited is based in Alloa, the breaches took place in Aberdeen.
The HSE notice said it was “foreseeable” that asbestos exposure could occur during “intrusive sampling” or when surveying a damaged building.
Unsuitable RPE was also a concern for the health body as it noted that changes to worker’s faces, such as dentistry work, were not taken into account when fitting masks.
The notice added that “suitable” individual testing of tight-fitting RPE wasn’t being provided to employees carrying out asbestos surveys in workplace buildings.
Director of the company, Jim Hutchinson, last night insisted workers were never at risk.
He said: “We had no external assessment of our RPE as we were happy to test it ourselves but HSE were not happy with that.
“There are only two of us working as surveyors so it is a rather trivial matter. We were reasonably comfortable with our training.”
The firm broke the Health and Safety at Work Act, the Control of Asbestos Regulations, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations and the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations.
