105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14505036

HEART,UNCONSCIOUSNESS,CONFINED SPACE,HEART ATTACK,WORK RULES,WELDING,TANK,RESPIRATOR

Event
HEART,UNCONSCIOUSNESS,CONFINED SPACE,HEART ATTACK,WORK RULES,WELDING,TANK,RESPIRATOR
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14505036
Report ID
728500

Event description

Employee dies of probable heart attack in aluminum tank

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 had entered an aluminum tank to do some welding. Approximately 20 mi nutes later, he was found dead. Upon investigation, the air vent was found to be functional. The fume respirator was not effective because the employee had a 1/ 2 inch of facial hair (a neat beard). According to a preliminary news report, Em ployee #1 died of a heart attack. More tests have been conducted and lab results are pending. Although Employee #1 had had a drug and alcohol problem in the rec ent past and possibly was not fit to work inside a tank, an autopsy screening fo r drugs found no misuse.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 33 M

    Nature of injury
    2
    Part of body
    4
    Event type
    12
    Source
    19
    Occupation code
    783
    Human factor
    4
    Environmental factor
    7
    Hazardous substance
    0560
    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.