OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14458772
VAPOR,VENTILATION,CLEANING,TOXIC ATMOSPHERE,INHALATION,SEAL,CHEMICAL VAPOR,OVEREXPOSURE,RESPIRATOR
Event description
Employee overcome by organic vapors
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was cleaning ink sludge from the interior of a machine when he began to lose consciousness. He was removed from the machine before he passed out com pletely. Paramedics responded within minutes and transported him to a local hosp ital. He was held overnight for observation, then discharged to return to unrest ricted work. Employee #1 later stated that he may have broken his respirator sea l when wiping off some perspiration. No tests were made for the presence of vola tile organic compounds from the ink sludge. The company had detector tube test c apability, but the equipment was not on site. The oxygen concentration in the ar ea measured 20 percent.
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 24 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 9
- Occupation code
- 863
- Human factor
- 16
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Hazardous substance
- 2037
- 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.