OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14528244
KERR-MCGEE CHEMICAL CORPORATION/PIGMENT PLANT
HAMILTON, MS·
Event description
Employee dies of oxygen deficiency in silo
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was to open a door to ventilate the room that contained the bag filt he door facing. He stepped through the gap into the room, presumably to shut off the nitrogen, but was overcome by the lack of oxygen. A helper with Employee #1 was not able to pull him out of the room alone. By the time help arrived, Emplo yee #1 had died. er on top of a silo. The silo had been overfilled with titanium dioxide, which i s transferred by a pneumatic conveying system that is operated at a high tempera ture (180 to 240 degrees Fahrenheit). The overfilling flooded the room with hot titanium dioxide and air, causing several plastic lines containing nitrogen at 1 25 psi to rupture. The titanium oxide filled the room to a depth of 2 to 3 feet so that the door, which opens inward, had to be cut from its hinges to be opened . Once this was done (about three hours after the nitrogen lines had ruptured), Employee #1 pushed the door in at the top, creating a gap between the door and t
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 26 M
- Nature of injury
- 2
- Part of body
- 28
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 19
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 7
- Hazardous substance
- 1900
- Task assigned
- 2
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.