OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14198485
COLDWATER SEAFOOD CORPORATION
CAMRIDGE, MD·
Event description
REFRIGERATION OPERATOR INJURED BY AMMONIA LEAK
Investigation abstract
At approximately 1:50 a.m. on July 10. 1988 Employee #1, a refrigeration operato ening this valve, but he had since he was alone and this valve was open when the fire department arrived. After the dose of ammonia, Employee #1 tried to put on respiratory protection equipment but could not because his glasses had been kno cked off and he could not see. He did secure the condenser valves on the roof an d was then taken to the hospital for treatment. r employed by Coldwater Seafood Corporation, began to change the oil of a Frick #9 compressor unit of an ammonia system. After closing the condenser valves, he changed the oil in the compressor unit, and then decided to clean the sight glas ses of a booster compressor. He removed the screws which held the glass in place and as soon as he had backed these screws out far enough, pressure in the syste m blew the glass plate off and a surge of ammonia contacted his face causing him to inhale ammonia. Pressure was present due to the fact that sometime after hav ing changed the oil he had reopened the discharge valve. He does not recall reop
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 57 M
- Nature of injury
- 4
- Part of body
- 31
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 9
- Occupation code
- 534
- Human factor
- 4
- Environmental factor
- 9
- Task assigned
- 2
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.