Gym Employee Taken ill by Chemical Leak

Everybody thinks of the gym as a place to go to get fit and healthy. However, that wasn’t the case for an employee at a Fitness First gym in Bournemouth. Six fire engines and 30 fire fighters went to the gym in Queens Park South Drive where a male member of staff was overcome by fumes from a chemical leak. A further nine workers were treated at the scene and then taken to hospital.

According to the BBC, Dorset Fire and Rescue Service were at a loss to explain how 25 litres of a hypochloride solution, used to clean pools, had become mixed with sodium bisulphate. The mixture creates two gases, sulphur dioxide, and chlorine gas, the latter of which is toxic and is believed to have been responsible for the injury.

This scenario shows the importance of storing potentially hazardous materials appropriately. Risk assessments need to be completed in order to make sure that there is no cross contamination of substances such as this causing possible risks to health of people who visit the gym and the employees who work there.

The Occupiers Liability Act 1957 provides that an occupier of premises owes a common duty of care to all visitors to his premises . The standard to which the owner of the premises must comply with is that any visitors must be “reasonably safe in using the premises for the purposes for which he is invited to be there”. It appears that the gym may have fallen below these standards if they are found to have failed to store these products safely and correctly.