OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14387575
MORTON CHEMICAL DIVISION
ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL·
Event description
Employee burned in fire at chemical mixing tank
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was charging a 1,000-gallon mixing tank with dry materials prior to present to support combustion. blending a batch of gel lacquer. Before charging, the tank had been cleaned with 50 gallons of toluene. The tank was charged through the top manhole opening usi ng 370 pounds of a chlorinated rubber product and an estimated 120 pounds of car nauba wax. Employee #1 then removed the polyethylene liner from the fiberboard d rum of wax and shook it. Shaking the polyethylene liner generated a static spark that ignited the dust and the toluene vapors in the tank. Fire flashed out of t he tank and Employee #1 sustained first- and second-degree burns to 10 percent o f his body. Nitrogen had been added to the tank, but sufficient oxygen was still
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 32 M
- Nature of injury
- 5
- Part of body
- 19
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 16
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 11
- Environmental factor
- 9
- Hazardous substance
- 2460
- 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.