By TARA BRADY

PUBLISHED: 19:17 GMT, 17 January 2013 | UPDATED: 08:08 GMT, 18 January 2013

An NHS trust has been ordered to pay more than £37,500 after staff were exposed to a potentially deadly strain of tuberculosis when a tube smashed in a lab.

Four employees were put at serious risk and the Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea had to be evacuated when the test vial containing multi-drug resistant TB bacteria was dropped in the specialist laboratory.

Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust (RBHT), which manages the south-west London hospital, was fined £12,500 and ordered to pay £25,000 in costs after admitting breaching health and safety laws.

Four employees were put at serious risk and the Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea had to be evacuated when the test tube smashed

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) launched an investigation following the spillage on January 17 last year.

None of the employees suffered adverse effects but the HSE identified a series of failings at the facility where the trust provides a microbiological diagnostic service.

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It found the trust conducted inadequate risk assessments which compromised the safety of staff and branded its emergency procedures 'poor'.

'It was a serious lapse', District Judge Elizabeth Roscoe, said at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Wednesday.

'It is right to say there had been advice and notices about the sealability, checking of filters, and so on, and I accept those were not deliberately ignored.

'But they were ignored by virtue of falling through gaps in the system.

'That's something that public bodies are susceptible to and need to be more stringent about.'

Those responsible for health and safety in the laboratory lacked the appropriate training and RBHT should have had a safe system which could have prevented exposure to TB, the HSE said.

Health and Safety executive inspectors found a series of problems with health and safety standards in the laboratory, including poor risk assessments and inadequate systems to tackle spillages.

Four employees were put at serious risk and the Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea had to be evacuated when the test tube smashed (file picture)

A hospital scientist had to go back into the lab to help clean up the hazardous spill, but was issued with an ill-fitting mask and had not been properly trained.

The HSE was forced to intervene at the same laboratory in 2002 over health and safety issues.

The defects were rectified but were allowed to reoccur over time, the HSE said.

Mara Ajder, HSE inspector, said: 'Multi-drug resistant TB is a potentially deadly bacterium.

'There are well established practices for handling this agent safely, but in this case these practices simply weren't met and several members of staff were exposed to a real risk of infection.

'The consequences of that one smashed vial could have been very serious, and the incident highlighted some serious flaws with controls and ways of working within the containment laboratory, a facility where the highest possible standards are necessary at all times.

'Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust failed in its duty to ensure the health, safety and welfare at work of its employees in its management of health and safety in the laboratory.'

The trust was ordered to pay a £15 victim surcharge on top of the fine and costs, following a hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court in central London, on Wednesday when it pleaded guilty to two health and safety breaches.