OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14427298
BESTWAY STRIPPING
AURORA, CO·
Event description
Employee killed after inhaling methylene chloride vapors
Investigation abstract
At approximately 3:00 p.m. on November 4, 1986, Employee #1, age 19, was found u This was Employee's #1's first day on the job, and he had apparently only been s tripping furniture for 2 hours. nconscious, hanging over a furniture stripping tank that contained a solution of methylene chloride, methanol, and toluene. It is not known when he had lost con sciousness. Attempts to resuscitate Employee #1 were unsuccessful and he was pro nounced dead at 4:00 p.m. The coroner's report stated that Employee #1 had devel oped an acute toxic reaction to methlyene chloride and lost consciousness, but h ad continued to breath the vapors while he was collapsed over the stripping tank . The toxicology examination revealed a toxic concentration of methylene chlorid e in the blood (5l micrograms/milliliter) and urine (18 micrograms/milliliter).
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 19 M
- Nature of injury
- 17
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 9
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 19
- Environmental factor
- 9
- Hazardous substance
- 1730
- 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.