OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14301550
HEAD,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,LOCKOUT,CAUGHT BETWEEN,CRUSHED,TRASH COMPACTOR
Event description
Employee killed when caught in trash compactor
Investigation abstract
At approximately 9:00 a.m. on November 5, 1988, Employee #1 reached into the tra o shut itself off when the trash loading chute door was opened; it is suspected that the safety switch was faulty. sh loading chute of a Tony Team model 2400 pollution packer. The trash compactor 's compactor plate had already compacted the trash, which was in the lower compa rtment, and the hydraulic cylinder was drawing the compactor plate upward. The c ompactor traveled very slowly, at perhaps 1 inch per second. Employee #1 was fou nd dead, with his head crushed between the compactor plate and the frame of the compactor. It is not clear why Employee #1 was inside the compactor while it was in operation, but it is suspected that he was trying to pull a box from between the compactor plate and the side of the compactor. The compactor was designed t
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 27 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 13
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 26
- Occupation code
- 453
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 4
- 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.