OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14567309

BURN,VENTILATION,CONFINED SPACE,WORK RULES,STEAM,TOLUENE,ARM,FACE,TANK

1989-12-21T00:00:00

Event: BURN,VENTILATION,CONFINED SPACE,WORK RULES,STEAM,TOLUENE,ARM,FACE,TANK
Linked inspection: No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number: 14567309
Report ID: 454510

Event description

Employee burned, but dies of unknown causes

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was performing the once-per-shift check of two steam valves located below an absorber tank that was 75 ft tall. The enclosed area below was about 10 ft high with a 10 ft diameter, and a 20 in. diameter opening for entry about 28 in. from the ground. No testing or venting was done before the employee entered the tank, which had been used to remove toluene from the air by steam washing. Employee #1 sustained burns on his arm and face and died. The cause of death is unknown.

Victim

#1 Fatality Age 38 M

Nature of injury
5

Part of body
9

Event type
14

Source
9

Occupation code
757

Human factor
1

Environmental factor
13

Hazardous substance
2960

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.