OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14336242
ACETYLENE TORCH,FLAMMABLE VAPORS,WORK RULES,DRUM,PAINT,EXPLOSION,STRUCK BY,CONCUSSION,CUTTING AND BURNING
Event description
Employee injured when struck by end of exploding drum
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was attempting to cut the bottom out of a 55 gallon drum using an ox y-acetylene cutting torch. The drum was purchased empty from a local paint compa ny. The drum had previously contained Piedmont Paints and Primers, Inc., V-1194, 50 sheen top coat, which contains toluene, xylene, ethyl and isobutyl alcohol, etc. The drum had not been cleaned. Employee #1 started cutting the drum with th e torch and it exploded, seriously injuring him. The drum was labeled with warni ngs against welding or cutting. Also, there was a picture depicting the prohibit ion of welding or cutting the drum.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 19 M
- Nature of injury
- 6
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 9
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 4
- Environmental factor
- 7
- 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.