OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14269922
NITROGEN,AIR LINE,RESPIRATOR
Event description
EMPLOYEE KILLED AFTER BREATHING NITROGEN IN RESPIRATOR
Investigation abstract
Digital Equipment Corporation had established a central breathing-air station to supply air line respirators in three plant locations. An outside contractor was connecting a fourth location to the existing system using a nitrogen gas purge while braising copper line. Employees at one of the existing air line locations were not notified of the work going on. As a result, Employee #1 plugged in his respirator and was killed when he breathed nearly pure nitrogen.
Victims (2)
-
#1 Fatality Age 24 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 25
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 19
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 18
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#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.