OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14331961
PPE,ANIMAL HANDLER,ANIMAL BITE,POISONING
Event description
EMPLOYEE HANDILING SNAKE DIES FROM BITE
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was moving a snake, (Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake), from a box to a tray at the snake house using a snake hook. The tail was held with his left h and, and the hook was held with the right hand. The snake fell off of the hook b ut was still held by the tail. An assistant employee nearby was told to go get E mployee #1's snake boots as neither employee had on their required boots. The sn ake tried 3 times to bite Employee #1 and on the third attempt bit the back of h is right hand. Employee #1 died one and half hours later, the large snake had bi tten him directly in a vein.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 22 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 31
- Event type
- 3
- Source
- 3
- Occupation code
- 175
- Human factor
- 17
- Environmental factor
- 18
- Hazardous substance
- 8880
- 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.