104,543Records 70,659Employers 84,666Hospitalizations 27,563Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-09-30
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14194849

ABDOMEN,PRESSURE VESSEL,WORK RULES,CLEANING,FOREARM,CHEMICAL BURN,PRESSURE RELEASE,CHEMICAL

Event
ABDOMEN,PRESSURE VESSEL,WORK RULES,CLEANING,FOREARM,CHEMICAL BURN,PRESSURE RELEASE,CHEMICAL
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14194849
Report ID
352440

Event description

EMPLOYEE BURNED BY SPRAYING CHEMICAL WHEN OPENING REACTOR

Investigation abstract

On May 31, 1985, Employee #1 was opening a pressurized reactor after cleaning. A fter checking the reactor's temperature and pressure gauge, the employee decided to remove the lip braces on reactor to complete cleaning process. While removin g the brace screws, sodium hydroxide solution sprayed out of the opening created between the base of the reactor and the lid. The spraying solution struck the e mployee on the upper abdomen and the lower right forearm, resulting in chemical burns to those areas of the body.

Victim

  1. #1 Hospitalized Age 27 M

    Nature of injury
    4
    Part of body
    1
    Event type
    1
    Source
    9
    Occupation code
    224
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    9
    Hazardous substance
    2260
    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.