OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14483549
LUNG,CONFINED SPACE,CLEANING,INHALATION,TANK CLEANING,FREON,POISONING,TANK
Event description
EMPLOYEE KILLED AFTER INHALING FREON
Investigation abstract
On February 28, 1989, Employee #1 entered an enclosed vessel 11 ft 6 in. long, 6 ft 4 in. wide, and 10 ft high. The container was open on the top. Employee #1 w as cleaning the vessel with trichlorotrifluoroethane, Freon 113. He was in the v essel for approximately 15 minutes then left for approximately 15 to 30 minutes. Upon entering the vessel for a second time, Employee #1 became poisoned and col lapsed. He had been in the vessel the second time for less than 5 minutes. The v essel had no mechanical ventilation.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 21 M
- Nature of injury
- 17
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 19
- Occupation code
- 864
- Human factor
- 17
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Hazardous substance
- T119
- 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.