OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #1000900
DURHAM HIGH SCHOOL
DURHAM, NC·
Event description
Teacher's eyes suffer chemical burns
Investigation abstract
Employee #1, a teacher, was rearranging chemicals within a chemical storeroom ad jacent to the chemistry classroom. During a classroom project, some students who were assisting Employee #1 encountered an uncovered vial of what proved to be s odium metal. The students placed the vial on a work table adjacent to a running faucet. Apparently, water was inadvertently introduced into the vial. The sodium metal reacted to the water and, when observed by Employee #1, was being transpo rted out of the classroom as the chemical exploded. Employee #1 suffered severe chemical burns to his eyes.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 56 M
- Nature of injury
- 4
- Part of body
- 8
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 9
- Occupation code
- 115
- Human factor
- 14
- Environmental factor
- 9
- Hazardous substance
- 8880
- Task assigned
- 1
Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.