OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14497663
BURN,SAFETY RELIEF VALVE,WORK RULES,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,HIGH PRESSURE,SEAL,PRESSURE RELEASE,HOT WATER
Event description
Employee killed when burned by hot water from reactor
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 and coworkers at a carbide plant were opening valves between a chill ing unit and the vinyl acetate reactor's water cooling system after a chilling s ystem was awned and installed by a contractor, Mobil Air, Inc. The chilling unit , which was also manufactured by Mobil Air, was rated at 100 PSIS. After install ing the equipment, Mobil Air employees left the carbide plant. The plant employe es opened valves to allow the reactor's 100 degree Celsius cooling water to circ ulate through the chiller. The pressure on the reactor was 138 PSIS. A cam and g roove coupling manufactured by Seal Fast, Inc., and rated at 100 PSIS, failed an d Employee #1 was burned by scalding water from the reactor. He was killed.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 31 M
- Nature of injury
- 5
- Part of body
- 5
- Event type
- 11
- Source
- 6
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 6
- 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.