OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14543482
GTE PRODUCTS CORPORATION
TOWANDA, PA·
Event description
Employee dies days after exposure to hydrogen sulfide
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was taking the place of another employee (going on break) who operat ed a sodium purification process (CTL). When Employee #1 was attempting to pump 26 1/2 gallons of sodium sulfahydrate into tank #2, she accidentally opened the valve to tank #1, which contained an acidic solution (pH 2.9). The sodium sulfah ydrate (pH 11) mixed with the acidic bath and generated hydrogen sulfide. Employ ee #1 was immediately overcome. She was revived at the scene, but died three day s later.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 43 F
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 31
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 9
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 9
- Hazardous substance
- 1480
- 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.