OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14297634
ACETYLENE TORCH,FLAMMABLE VAPORS,WORK RULES,CLEANING,DRUM,THUMB,TOLUENE,EXPLOSION,SPRAIN,CUTTING AND BURNING
Event description
Employee sprains thumb when 55-gallon drum explodes
Investigation abstract
On May 8, 1986, Employee #1 was cleaning up the storage yard of a facility that on the part of the employee. manufactures and repairs trash dumpsters, trash compactors, and bodies for trash trucks. He wheeled out an oxygen/acetylene cutting drum and started to cut a 55 -gallon drum that had originally been used to hold toluene. The drum ruptured, c ausing Employee #1 to sprain his thumb. According to the foreman and coworkers, the 18-year-old employee, who had been trained at a private sector training scho ol, had been instructed on May 7, 1986, not to use a torch to cut barrels but to use a hammer or cold chisel. No one saw him remove the torch from the shop. The re were no apparent violations; rather, this was an apparent case of misconduct
Victim
-
#1 Non-hospitalized injury Age 18 M
- Nature of injury
- 20
- Part of body
- 10
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 7
- Occupation code
- 783
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 5
- 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.