OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #1001379
AMANA REFRIGERATION INC.
AMANA, IA·
Event description
Three employees injured after inhaling chlorine gas
Investigation abstract
At 10:00 a.m. on August 7, 1986, Employee #1 decided to exchange the gas pressur the valve. Approximately 10 lb of chlorine escaped during the 12 1/2 minutes the value was open. Employees #1 through #3 inhaled the escaped gas and were taken to area hospitals. e regulator in use on a cylinder of chlorine liquid/gas that was located outside the plant and inside a storage cabinet near an open truck loading doorway. He w as going to replace the regulator with a regulator that had been removed from an other cylinder. Thinking that he had shut off the supply valve on top of the cyl inder, he removed the regulator. The valve was, in fact, open and when the seal was broken chlorine gas escaped in front of Employee #1. He moved back and away from the leaking cylinder and radioed the maintenance dispatcher to report the c hlorine leak. The dispatcher arrived wearing an emergency respirator and closed
Victims (3)
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 30 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 19
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Hazardous substance
- 0640
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#2 Hospitalized Age 30 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 19
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Hazardous substance
- 0640
- Task assigned
- 2
-
#3 Hospitalized Age 35 F
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 19
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Hazardous substance
- 0640
- 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.