OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14252597
VAPOR,RAILROAD CAR,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,RUPTURE,VALVE,SPILL,TOXIC FUMES,FORMALDEHYDE,TANK,CHEMICAL
Event description
Formaldehyde spilled when railroad tanker derails
Investigation abstract
At approximately 4:40 a.m. on June 21, 1988, 20,000 gallons of formaldehyde were ged tanker to a vacuum truck, pumping up spilled formaldehyde that pooled betwee n the gravel ballast of the railroad track bed and the soil underneath, and trea ting the affected area with sodium sulfite to neutralize any remaining formaldeh yde. No Four Seasons employees were injured during the cleanup. spilled during a derailment at CSX yard B in Hamlet, NC. During the derailment, a valve on the bottom of a tank car ruptured and spilled the formaldehyde. Four CSX employees were exposed. The conductor of the derailed train walked forward from the caboose into the vapor cloud. He was taken to the hospital and held for observation. Three crew members from another train were exposed as their train passed near the wreck and through the vapor cloud. CSX contracted Four Seasons I ndustrial Services, Inc., to clean up the spill. The remedial actions consisted of plugging the leaking tanker, pumping the remaining formaldehyde from the dama
Victim
-
#981 Degree 0 Age 0
- Nature of injury
- 0
- Part of body
- 0
- Event type
- 0
- Source
- 0
- Occupation code
- 0
- Human factor
- 0
- Environmental factor
- 0
- Task assigned
- 0
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.