OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14455893
WESTERN ZIRCONIUM
OGDEN, UT—
Event description
Employee suffers oxygen deficiency in chlorination plant
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was working below a condenser in a chlorination plant. He was wearin icion could not be verified with the blood gas sample, as he had been on 100 per cent oxygen for at least 40 minutes before his blood was taken. The unit on whic h Employee #1 had been working had been out of service for a few days and had be en under a nitrogen purge. g a canister respirator because of the possibility of chlorine or carbon dioxide in the area. As he tried to retrieve a light from inside the condenser, Employe e #1 passed out. He was removed from the platform and administered oxygen. He re vived, but continued to receive oxygen until he arrived at the hospital. Blood s amples showed that Employee #1 had elevated levels of carbon dioxide, but the le vels of other gases were normal. Sampling done in the work area did not reveal a ny concentration of gases that would cause loss of consciousness. The most proba ble cause for Employee #1 to lose consciousness was oxygen deficiency. This susp
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 29 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 31
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 19
- Occupation code
- 99
- Human factor
- 16
- 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.