'Carnage' after blast at factoryA blast at a pharmaceutical factory which killed a worker was caused by a piece of debris in a chemical filtering machine, a hearing has been told.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigated the explosion at the Aesica plant in Ponders End, north London, following the death of 49-year-old chemical operator David Highstead.
HSE specialist inspector Taran Hewitt told North London Coroner's Court that the explosion was caused by a discarded piece of rubber which "compromised" one of the unit's sealing mechanisms.
Nitrogen gas was able to leak undetected from the outer chamber of the machine and into the unit's cartridge, where the pressure of the gas built up, leading to the explosion.
Fellow employees said the incident caused "carnage" at the plant and that the father of one was lifted into the air as the machine blew up on November 21 2007. He died two days later.
The hearing was told it could not be established how the debris had got into the unit.
Mr Hewitt said that the build-up of nitrogen in the cartridge "didn't register on any of the gauges that they had, as part of standard protocol, been instructed to look at."
Copyright © Press Association 2010
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