OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14427389
AIR PRESSURE,SAFETY RELIEF VALVE,WORK RULES,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,EXPLOSION,HIGH PRESSURE
Event description
Employee injured when air tank explodes
Investigation abstract
On March 25, 1987, Employee #1 was working as a tire changer in a tire shop. A c ustomer entered the shop and asked a coworker, the customer's brother, if he cou ld use the portable air tank. The customer was told to fill up the tank using se veral tire-changing machines. As he did this, the tank exploded, killing the cus tomer and injuring Employee #1. The portable air tank and the tire changing mach ines were not equipped with safety valves or pressure gauges. The Citation Power Cleaning Equipment portable air tank, model 250, had been the object of two maj or recalls by the Consumer Products Safety Commission in 1973. The tanks lacked safety valves and were poorly constructed.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 23 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 2
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 2
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 9
- Environmental factor
- 15
- 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.