105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14225916

CONSTRUCTION,INHALATION,FREON,INTOXICATED,PURGING

Event
CONSTRUCTION,INHALATION,FREON,INTOXICATED,PURGING
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14225916
Report ID
316100

Event description

EMPLOYEE KILLED AFTER INHALING FREON

Investigation abstract

Employee #1, an air conditioning and heat pump service technician, was purging l ines on related equipment utilizing Freon. He would allow air and Freon to exhau st into the atmosphere. Employee #1 had told a coworker that by smelling the exh aust lines he could distinguish distinct odors that told him when the system had been purged. Employee #1 became poisoned by Freon and died.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 28 M

    Nature of injury
    17
    Part of body
    4
    Event type
    8
    Source
    19
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    7
    Hazardous substance
    0628
    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.