foundry worker injury claim

Foundry Injury Claim: Worker Compensation For Occupational Disease And Workplace Accidents

Foundry workers are exposed to a high-risk of injury from extreme conditions and hazardous chemicals – both occupational illness and workplace accidents for which a compensation claim can be made.

Dangers range from exposure to extreme heat and toxic fumes to loud vibrating machinery and heavy lifting.

This guide will explain when you can make a claim from your employer for compensation for injury and financial loss.

Table of Contents

What is a foundry worker injury claim?

If you currently work or have previously worked in a foundry and you suffer injury in an accident or from a type of industrial disease as result of your employer’s negligence or breach of statutory duty – you may be entitled to make a foundry worker injury claim for compensation.

Your compensation will include monies for the pain and suffering your injuries cause you to experience coupled with lost income and other financial loss and expense.

What is a foundry?

A foundry is a specialised industrial facility where primarily metal castings are produced.

A Foundry May Do Other Activities With Metal

Foundries primarily manufacture metal castings, but more rarely they can do other metal processes. For example – rolling and forging of metal to produce railway tracks for the rail industry.

UK industries supplied by foundries

In general, foundries play a vital role in manufacturing components for essential UK industries, such as:

  1. The automotive industry – producing all manner of vehicle from cars and motorcycles to buses and lorries. Vehicle metal components might include parts for: brakes,, engines, EV electric motors, alloy wheels, etc. Interestingly, Tesla are attempting to cast every larger structural car parts in one go.
  2. Railways. Not only components for the train itself – such as the wheels, but also parts for the rail tracks. The tracks themselves are made by rolling and forging not by casting. However, some foundries might also do these processes as well as castings.
  3. Construction industry. Both structural metal items can be cast in a foundry (such as columns, beams and lintels) or decorative metal components (for example, railings and balustrades).
  4. Generation of power – both fossil fuel and renewable. For example – turbines (wind, water, steam, gas, etc.) and solar energy mounting systems.

Your Employer Must Take Steps To Ensure Worker Safety

Each stage of foundry work processes carries its own hazards for which your employer must take the correct precautions to ensure your safety. Failure to do so resulting in injury can lead to a successful claim against your foundry employer.

The process of casting metal in a foundry and the dangers they present

We will look at each stage in turn of a foundry metal casting process coupled with the specific dangers that workers might encounter that can cause injury and a potential claim.

Health And Safety Executive Guidance And Tools

Your employer is under a duty to assess the risk to workers in the workplace. This is even more important when you work in hazardous work environment. such as a foundry.

The HSE provides specific guidance to employers for the different stages of foundry work.

In addition – the Health and Safety Executive provides some helpful tools for your employer to assess risks. For example – Manual Handling Assessment Charts (MAC) and Assessment of Repetitive Tasks (ART).

Melting metal in furnaces

During the melting process, metal is melted in a furnace that is either charged with virgin materials (for example – pig iron or pure forms of metal used to make alloys) or scrap metal (for example – recycled scrap or byproducts of the casting process).

Generally – the types of furnace you may encounter will depend on the type of metal being processed. The most common furnaces include: electric arc furnaces, inductions furnaces, cupola furnaces, reverberatory furnaces and crucible furnaces.

Dangers Of The Melting Process

Foundry workers face many risks during the metal melting process that can cause injury and result in claim for compensation.

For example:

  • Burns from hot metal and castings.
  • Skin damage and other bodily injury from heat stress.
  • Lung disease from excessive inhalation of molten metal fumes.
  • There are explosive risks during the melting process that can cause significant worker injury.
  • You might experience manual handling injuries from heavy and awkward lifting in a confined space.

Pouring molten metal into moulds

Molten metal is poured into moulds using gravity, vacuum, or pressurised gas. The most common substance used to make a moulds is sand. Sand can not only withstand high temperatures, but is also readily available and relatively cheap.

Risks Of The Molten Metal Pouring Process

The pouring process may be done manually and this can be very heavy work. You might experience back and shoulder injury.

In addition, manipulating molten metal can lead to severe burns.

You may experience toxic fume exposure – to your skin causing industrial dermatitis and to your lungs causing a lung damage.

These are all very typical foundry injury claims that workers can have from the molten metal pouring process.

Cooling and solidifying

During the cooling and solidifying process – the metal is allowed to cool and harden

Typical Worker Injuries During The Cooling Process

The most common types of injury you might experience if working in the foundry cooling process can include:

Burns caused by contact with hot castings.

Impact injury and acoustic shock from explosions caused by thermal stress.

Noise induced hearing loss from excessive noise from the cooling system machines.

Removing the mould (fettling) and surface finishing

Fettling is the process of removing excess material and imperfections from a casting after it has solidified and cooled. This includes removing the sand mould, as well as any runners, risers, and flash (excess metal).

foundry work metal casting processes
Foundry Work Metal Casting Processes

The fettling process includes:

  1. Shakeout – violent vibration of the casting to release sand.
  2. Removal of the solid casting core by vibration and hammering.
  3. Blasting, cutting and grinding.
  4. Surface finishing. For example, by shot blasting or tumbling with abrasive material.

This is the part of the foundry process that we typically see the most types of worker injury claims.

Worker Injuries During The Fettling Process

The typical type of injury you might experience for which you can make a claim, include:

Lung disease and breathing disorders. For example – silicosis lung disease from the inhalation of dusts.

Vibration related conditions, such as VWF and HAVS. Caused from the use of vibrating machinery,

Industrial deafness and tinnitus. Caused from excessive noise from the fixed large machinery and hand held tools.

Eye and skin injuries. Caused by exposure to metal fragments and abrasive materials.

General dangers for foundry workers

We have discussed the specific dangers of the different processes found in a foundry. However – there also exist general dangers of being in the foundry workplace.

Slips, trips and falls

There are many objects that can be left discarded on a foundry floor that can cause tripping hazards. Not to mention – slippery fluids and substances that can cause a worker to slip and fall.

See our slip and trip article for more details about the types of injury that you can experience in a slip and trip and how to claim from your employer.

Respiratory disease and breathing problems

Many conditions can be caused from the inhalation of hazardous chemicals and dusts. The nature of the lung injury will depend on the type of substance reaching your lungs.

For example – silicon dust can cause silicosis whereas iron dust can cause pulmonary siderosis. Both of which involve scarring to the airways and reduced lung function.

Also, more general long conditions can be caused – such as occupational asthma and COPD.

Skin damage

Skin exposure to foundry dusts and chemicals can cause various skin conditions, including contact dermatitis.

Whereas sharp metal shards can cause abrasive injuries and hot casting and molten metal can lead to foundry worker burn injury claims.

Eye injuries

Dusts and abrasive materials can go directly into your eye and cause injury.

Alternatively, they may go indirectly. For example – consider a foundry worker who is exposed to metal dust, but with the correct protective clothing. If shower and changing facilities are not available at work – it may be that sharp particles are caught on the body or on under clothing that in turn work there way into your eye after you finish work.

Manual handling injuries

Heavy lifting and excessive repetitive tasks can cause a number of injuries. See our manual handling claim article for more details for more details of how your employer can be found at fault for your worker injury claim.

Hearing damage and tinnitus

We have discussed the danger of noise in the foundry workplace. See our noise induced hearing loss payouts and tinnitus compensation articles to see how much you can claim.

In addition – our industrial deafness claims article sets out the duties your employer has and when you can make a claim for compensation.

Use of vibrating hand held machinery can typically cause conditions, such as vibration white finger and hand arm vibration syndrome.

Large machine that vibrate the whole of your body can cause – whole body vibration syndrome.

Can you claim if your injury was caused by another foundry worker?

Yes – a legal doctrine known as vicariously liability will mean that your employer is liable for negligent acts done by other workers that cause you injury.

In other words – you can make a foundry injury claim directly against your employer and their insurers for accidental and sometimes even deliberate acts by co-workers.

What can your employer do to limit foundry injury claims?

Your employer can provide the correct PPE (personal protective equipment), give proper training, make risk assess (and act on the findings), limit unnecessary exposure to harmful machinery and substances.

In this way – you can be kept safe and avoid injury. However, mistakes can be made and injuries may still occur for which you may still be able to make a foundry worker injury claim.

SUMMARY of foundry worker injury claims

To summarise – in this article we have described the processes that are involved in working metal in a foundry together with the dangers you might experience. We described typical injuries and when you can claim. Finally – we link to real life foundry worker Q&A’s and provide access to our free legal help options.

Q&A – Foundry Worker Claims

Fettling Injury Claim: Siderosis Lung Disease, Hearing Loss and VWF

Find out when a foundry worker involved in the fettling process can claim for Siderosis, VWF and hearing loss. We consider employment having ended many years ago and former employers no longer being in business.

Metal Press Stamping Machine Operator Hearing Damage Claim

How a metal press stamping machine operator can claim compensation for hearing loss and tinnitus from work for two different past foundry employers.

If you have suffered injury in a foundry and wish to discuss making a claim. Why not use our free legal help – you can speak direct with a solicitor and have your claim assessed.

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