An employee of Lancashire kitchen worktop company Granite Care was killed this month (March) by a slab of stone falling on him from an \'A\' frame.

It was the fourth death resulting from crush accidents in the past three years and has led to warnings from the Health, Safety, Ethical & Environmental Executive and Stone Federation Great Britain about the safe handling of stone, although none of the deaths involved Federation member companies.

The man killed has been named as 27-year-old Christopher Marshall.

Stone Federation have just introduced a new Health, Safety, Ethical & Environmental service for members to alert them to problems in the industry and the first of their \'accident alerts\' under the scheme contained news about the fatality at Granite Care. The alert will be followed up by a best-practice guide. Both the alert and the guide are emailed to members and sent as hard copies. The best practice guide is intended to be put on a notice board for employees to read.

Trevor Hay at the Health, Safety, Ethical & Environmental Executive said that while he could not comment on the specific case at Granite Care, the fact that this was the fourth crush fatality, three of which had involved \'A\' frames, in the past three years raised questions. He said there were a number of issues relating to storing stone slabs on \'A\' frames. One was that stones were being stacked with no packing in between them, so they had to be prized apart in order to get straps down between them to lift them off by crane for processing. Separating the individual slabs with timber or other materialsd would overcome this problem.