OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14461669
BURN,UNSECURED,WORK RULES,COOKER,BACK,HIGH PRESSURE,FACE,PRESSURE RELEASE,HIGH TEMPERATURE
Event description
Two employees burned in pressure cooker release
Investigation abstract
At 6:00 a.m. on November 13, 1985, Employees #1 and #2 were working in the plant shut. He then began to release the pressure in the cooker through valves on its lid and right side. The pressure in the oven caused the lid to open. Hot vapor and boiling ingredients came out, seriously burning the front and left side of E mployee #1's face and Employee #2's back. Both were taken by police to a diagnos tic center for first aid, then transferred to the intensive care unit at the hos pital. of Nature Food, Inc., in Rio Pedras. Employee #1 was operating a Japanese syste m that processed raw material to make vegetable cheese; Employee #2 was his assi stant. This involved mixing the ingredients, cooking them in a pressure cooker, and then transferring the mixture to another container to separate the liquids a nd solids. According to Employee #1, who was operating the second processing set , the amount of product obtained from the first set was less than expected and h e added more ingredients. When this did not produce the expected amount of produ ct, Employee #1 removed a safety device that kept the top of the pressure cooker
Victims (2)
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 28 M
- Nature of injury
- 5
- Part of body
- 5
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 6
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 9
- Environmental factor
- 18
- Hazardous substance
- 8880
- Task assigned
- 1
-
#2 Hospitalized Age 22 M
- Nature of injury
- 5
- Part of body
- 5
- Event type
- 14
- Source
- 6
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 9
- Environmental factor
- 18
- Hazardous substance
- 8880
- 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.